Random Writings On the Wall

Inheritance

2011-12-01T03:07:00.002+11:00

When it comes to books, bigger isn’t always better.

The longer a story is, it doesn’t always mean that the longer you get to prolong the feeling of enjoyment reading it.

And somebody desperately needs to remind Christopher Paolini that.

Inheritance, the long awaited ending to the Inheritance Cycle was heralded with much fanfare, with sales soaring through the roof (it is currently ranked atop the New York Times Bestseller List for 2011) as fans eagerly snapped up the books to finally discover the answers to the hundreds of questions that have been debated and discussed in fan forums: Will Eragon finally defeat Galbatorix? What of the mysterious green dragon, and who will be its new rider? Will Eragon really leave Alagaesia?

Paolini answers those questions and many more-albeit in a ridiculously long-winded and drawn-out fashion.

Now don’t get me wrong; I was one of those fans rushing to get their hands on Inheritance the very minute it hit bookstores so I’m certainly no anti-Shurtugal taking a swipe at Inheritance; I’m just a big fan that had quite a severe let-down.

I wasn’t a fan of Eragon, but Eldest was a big improvement and I really quite enjoyed Brisingr. Nonetheless, Inheritance is, to me; the weakest of the cycle.

The book opens with a battle scene (as do countless other chapters later on); possibly set a few days after that devastating loss at Gil’ead where Murtagh (or more accurately, Galbatorix through Murtagh) had slain Eragon’s mentor; Oromis and his dragon, Glaedr. We see Eragon, Saphira and the Varden preparing to storm the city of Feinster; the first of many other sieges as they continue their long march to Urubaen to confront the wicked, iron-fisted antagonist of the series, Galbatorix. The opening part of the book starts out promisingly enough; the discovery of the Dauthdaert; a long-forgotten dragon-killer weapon that Galbatorix possibly doesn’t know about; an interesting thought of Nasuada’s as she ponders marriage to Orrin as a way of resolving the mounting conflict between herself and the Surdan king among others; all of them pointed towards an exciting build-up towards the final showdown between Eragon and Galbatorix.

Filled with renewed courage and a hope of victory, we march with the Varden as they continue their journey across the Empire to Galbatorix’s lair. But eventually the plot begins to lose its shape and structure; melting instead into a never-ending description of battle after siege after capture. There were some interesting moments; such as the battle with the crazy Helgrind priests and Eragon’s narrow escape from becoming Ra’zac fodder but most of it sinks into unmemorable oblivion. One gets the feeling that Paolini could have spared his readers much of the painstaking detail, and instead focussed on what was necessary.

For me, a few good twists were the discovery of the secret stash of Eldunari and dragon eggs in the Vault of Souls within the Rock of Kuthian as well as Galbatorix having seemingly unstoppable control of the ancient language, having guessed its true name; however surprises such as these were few and far between. Many plot sequences felt clichéd and whisper it, generic. It was easy to guess that Eragon and Saphira would somehow manage to discover their true names in order to open the Vault of Souls; that somehow a spell that required “no language” would be the one to finally break Galbatorix (think non-verbal spells from Harry Potter) and that when push came to shove; Eragon would somehow defeat Galbatorix because Paolini has already said this will be the last book. Oh and Arya being the new Rider was another sadly, widely-guessed cliché.

IMHO, there were so many interesting subplots that could have been explored further; a good example being Angela. After relatively muted cameos in the first 3 books, Angela is given a much meatier role in Book 4 and she does not disappoint; proving to be full of tricks up her sleeve and more than a match for most foes, despite her being a mere “herbalist”. One of the more interesting characters in the series, she lends an air of intrigue and mystique that leaves the reader wanting to delve more into her surely interesting and storied past; but although Paolini leaves tantalising hints that he will answer those queries somewhere later in the book, he never does. The romantic in me was also vastly disappointed at the lack of relationship development in the book, despite all the potential that had been promised throughout the first 3 books. It is a great shame that Eragon and Arya’s love was not realized; as theirs had the making of an epic romance and the tantalizing feeling had always been that Arya would reciprocate Eragon’s feelings after the war with Galbatorix was over. The build-up to it had been promising, with Arya hinting in earlier chapters that she had begun to feel something more for the Rider but when the time came to say goodbye; it almost felt flat. Many readers were enraged that not even a kiss was written into the ending!

Another intriguing subplot was the hinted romantic feelings that Murtagh held for Nasuada. A popular pairing in Inheritance fandom, I was nonetheless surprised to see it used as an actual plot element, and that it actually ended up being Murtagh’s saving grace. Much was left unsaid of the pair, and the ending gives no further mention as to whether Murtagh eventually returns from his wanderings with Thorn and whether he returns to Nasuada. Another interesting character that was woefully underdeveloped.

As hinted above, insufficient character development has been one of my main gripes with the series; the protagonist Eragon himself is guilty of feeling at times, one-dimensional. He has an almost Gary-Stu feel to him; I was never really able to connect with him the way I did with Harry Potter, Darren Shan and all the rest of those great fantasy protagonists. His struggles are believable enough, but Paolini does not reveal a darker, more human side to him; Eragon’s goals and mindset have always been unwaveringly clear, his thoughts and intentions always noble and immune to temptation and personally, therein lies the problem-we can’t empathize with him because he doesn’t feel real enough. Sure he grows up much during the series; from the shy farmer’s boy who found a dragon’s egg to a fearsome warrior and proficient magician, but he lacks mental depth. One of my favourite parts of the Harry Potter series was the character developments of both Severus Snape and Albus Dumbledore; where JK Rowling gradually explored both the good and the flawed aspects of their personality, being and background; leading us to understand and accept why they made the decisions they did, we could draw parallels with them and real people making real decisions.

Many parts of the book were also irrelevant and bordering on self-indulgent as they added little or nothing to the plot: Did we really need a whole chapter on Orik making a stone, or Saphira flying through a storm? The constant battle descriptions were also distracting and broke the flow of the story for the reader. Many a time I was tempted to skip yet another lengthy description of how Roran bashed yet another soldier but I read through them all, afraid of missing something important.

While the final confrontation with Galbatorix was decently contrived, the ending has left fans divided, with many expressing dismay that the series has effectively been “killed” off as Eragon can never return to Alagaesia. Personally, that conclusion was inevitable given Angela’s earlier prediction and after reading the remaining few chapters after the Varden’s victory, it also seems the most practical. Nonetheless, the ending felt rushed and unsatisfactory; as many loose ends remain untied and the reader is left with the half-hungry feeling in his stomach of insufficient satisfaction after too little to eat. What were the seven words Brom last spoke, what is Eragon’s true name, how was it that Galbatorix was able to have knowledge of every single one of the Varden’s activities, and who or what were his spies? What of the remaining Ra’zac eggs? Is the missing belt of Beloth the Wise ever found again? It has been suggested that an epilogue of all the main characters would have served the purpose better, but one could also argue that for a change, it is nice not to have the book end immediately after the villain has been killed; showing that there are still troubles and things to sort out even after the main course has been served and it is nice to learn a bit more about Eragon’s plans for the future. Of course, it could also be that Paolini has deliberately left these questions unanswered as he prepares to write a further book on Alagaesia, as hinted when he said that he might “revisit Alagaesia once again”, but one could also argue that he created too many plot holes than he could tie-up in the normal course of story-telling.

After visiting some major fan forums, an interesting yet unusual reason that has also been cited as an issue was the failure to kill off a major character (I had half-expected Murtagh to sacrifice himself to save Eragon, cliché as that might have been); just to add plot interest. Throughout the book, Roran seemed the most likely to die, Paolini having written in so many false alarms! As a sucker for happy endings, I’m not sorry that no major character deaths occurred; but one cannot deny that it would have made for a more interesting ending to see how Eragon might deal with the grief and possibly guilt that the victory had come at such a high cost.

Overall, for a book that had been hyped so much but ultimately failed to deliver on most counts, I would award Inheritance 2.5 stars out of 5, but the entire series deserves a 3.5 at least. Paolini has created a stunningly detailed world and for the most part, a spellbinding adventure despite its numerous flaws. The writing can often sink into dull recital mode but the wonderful imagery should be more than enough to counter that, and it is not half a bad series to spend a Sunday afternoon curled up with.

Guilty Hehe...

2011-07-27T12:26:00.002+10:00

..because I just realised that the blog has been abandoned for more than half a year. Heh.

The blogging trend seems to have gotten washed away by the current wave of Facebook status updates and tweets, people just don't seem to have the patience to type more than a 100 word update at a time. Granted, trends like these are often fleeting and Facebook and Twitter, with their variety of apps and huge commercial potential appear to have much more staying power than blogs do. I do feel a bit sad/guilty sometimes though, seeing as how I used to blog religiously; consequently there is quite a complete chronicle of my college life here but virtually nothing about my uni life. I guess turning automatically to FB has become second-nature to me. But I am sort of free this week (it's only Week 1) so maybe I can make up for it tonight..if I don't get lost in the swamp of ironing waiting for me.

SLUMP!

2011-01-07T00:35:00.005+11:00

Chelsea 0 Bottom-of-table Wolves 1

Chelsea 1 Bolton 0

Chelsea 3 Aston Villa 3

Chelsea 1 Arsenal 3

Chelsea 1 Spurs 1

Chelsea 1 Everton 1

Chelsea 1 Newcastle 1

Chelsea 0 Birmingham 1

Chelsea 1 Sunderland 3

Chelsea 0 Liverpool 2

Even looking at these results gives me the shivers. The worst slump we've EVER been in for donkey years. No disrespect but when table-proppers start beating us, you know that something is seriously, seriously wrong.

Manchester Utd P20 44

Manchester City P21 42

Arsenal P21 40

Tottenham P21 36

......................................

Chelsea P21 35

Sunderland P22 33

Game over for this year.

Memories

2010-12-18T01:43:00.002+11:00

Lesson #1: Never ever look at your photo albums late at night. Warning: Severe tugging of heartstrings may be experienced.

BPL: Chelsea v Man Utd Sunday 11pm

Dark Days

2010-11-15T16:20:00.004+11:00

Ohhh these are dark days indeed. The CLAW exam was a NIGHTMARE. I'll be lucky to escape with a credit. My mum was right, open book Law exams are absolute b*tches. Part 1 was the stuff of nightmares.

Choose two out of the following four questions:-

1. Explain the role of the courts in interpreting broad statutory provisions such as s. 52 (misleading and deceptive). (A/N: *blank*)

2. If you had to suggest three constitutional amendments to the PM, what would they be and why? (A/N: Err Bill of Rights maybe?)

3. How does the common law balance certainty and flexibility? (A/N: Okay I think I know this, sounds like the doctrine of stare decisis)

4. To what extent does the law represent justice? (A/N: Err I think the textbook has a little bit on this :s)

AAAHHHH FAIL! FOR SURE!

Part 2: Contracts (A/N: Okay I hope. I know exclusion clauses were involved)

Part 3: Negligence (A/N: ZOMG horrible. Sometimes when the question is too simple you go brain dead because you only prepare for the exceptions to the rule!!!)

Part 4: As expected, IP and unconscionable conduct came out. Q1: To what extent are ideas protected under the intellectual property regime? and Q2: Can unconscionability laws coexist with the doctrine of freedom of contract? Hopefully I got something right there seeing as I sort of prepared for these questions. Old man, you are so so so mean! If I get a Pass, it's going to pull my average down from a HD to a D!

ACCT 1B which seemed pretty horrible at the time (The Cash Flow was killer! I didn't know that Bad Debts would come back to haunt me!!!) now seems like a piece of cake next to this horror. Econ was do-able, just that there was a lot of writing involved. Andy and I actually prepared one of the written question from the textbook the night before so hopefully it's all good there.

One more paper to go, ECMT! Got the project marks back today, 13/15. It's a HD so not much complaints. I'm reasonably happy; just that it wasn't very nice to see my friend next to me get 14.6 hmph.

But worst of all...

Chelsea 0 SUNDERLAND 3

Omg I know we had like half our first team squad missing but I don't remember the last time we got thrashed at the Bridge. This is humiliating. *cries* Lampard come back, we need you aaahhh.

FINALS

2010-11-06T10:54:00.004+11:00

Err okay so I was supposed to update my blog like after the last Macro exam which seemed to be ages ago..guess I forgot whoops. I'll probably do a recap of this sem after I go home and have nothing to do but rot my brains out during the hols. Anyway, finals are starting in two days time so as you can imagine, everyone's in a super sombre/*short-fuse* kind of mood. I've been trying to escape the tension in the house by hoofing it off to Fisher, where I must admit the growth in my y (output/capita) has been exponential, compared to me sitting in my room and trying to bully my brain into submission. There's no denying the tension/stress as you walk down the aisles on the 8th floor, but at least you don't have to face anybody since we each have individual cubicles. This sem's STUVAC seems to be even more intense the last one: tennis at 7am, library by 9-10 am and round the clock studying until 10pm. I've pretty much put in the same or slightly more effort this semester, but the material just seems to be much more difficult this sem. Throw in a killer Commercial Law subject and you have a recipe for ultimate disaster lol. Again, I have revised my expectations downwards (from the ultimate goal of 4 HDs to 3 HDs and 1D) because I probably didn't put in enough work/didn't do as well as the first semester. But I guess that's normal. No one comes to uni and gets a string of HDs all the way to third year since it only gets harder and harder each sem.

The only good thing to have come out of STUVAC is..STUVAC SUPPERS! It was apple pie on Monday, TimTams on Tuesdays, Shin Ram Yun/Indo Mie on Wednesday, Krispy Kremes on Thursday and Indian food/Diwali celebration on Friday (which I missed). Tonight's the one everyone's been looking forward to, Pizza! :) I swear IH is contributing to our misery, by making us fat on top of being stressed and miserable haha. I can't believe that first year will be over in two weeks time, its been one heck of an interesting year and it's really sad to think that I'll only have 2/3 more years of the student experience to go.

As much as I'd love to go on reflecting/waffling, I guess it's time to get back to Econ.

Monday 8/11 ACCT 1002 (55%-need > 47.2% for HD)

Thursday 11/11 ECON 1002 (50%-need > 38.75% for HD)

Saturday 13/11 CLAW 1001 (60%-need > 51.75% for HD)

Thursday 18/11 ECMT 1010 (40%-marks not released yet)

Macro Exam

2010-09-15T10:26:00.002+10:00

GDP. Inflation. CPI. Unemployment. Okun's Law. Recession. Output gap. Keynesian Theory. Planned Aggregate Expenditure. Velocity. Interest Rates. Taylor Rule.

Go away...please? :(

PS Just realised the last post was a month ago. Have so much to catch up on after Thursday's exam!

Shocking?

2010-08-10T19:49:00.002+10:00

Catching up on football news..

1. Martin O'Neill has shockingly jumped the Villa ship after 4 years in charge. The timing could hardly be worse with the new PL season kicking off this Saturday

2. James Milner has finally put to rest the rumours that have been dogging him all summer, completing a 24 million pound switch to Moneybags FC.

3. Chelsea lost 3-1 to Man Utd in the Community Shield on Sunday. This marks their 4th straight pre-season loss to-date, alarm bells ringing for Carlo?

4. Paul Robinson has decided to call time on international football after being snubbed by Fabio Capello for the friendly against Hungary. Poor Robbo, he never really did recover after that debacle against Croatia.

5. Barcelona have managed to capture Mesut Oezil as Man Utd and Chelsea were too slow. However, Chelsea have managed to capture promising young midfielder Ramires as a replacement for Ballack.

Oh and I did manage to get a place at the Math workshop hehe. Maybe I'll go watch Chelsea's opening match against WBA this Saturday.

The End of a Bad Week

2010-08-07T00:39:00.003+10:00

Reasons why Week 2 was horrible:-

1. I AM SICK AGAIN. Seriously. It's like my body has no defense against Australian germs. And I missed the Welcome to the Jungle party lol.

2. ZOMG my CLAW tutor is sooo scary. He's bound to be critical and harsh when marking our presentations. I was literally quaking in my boots during that extremely frightening hour.

3. Have to start forming groups for ACCT1002 group project aargh. Don't really like the look of the peeps in my tute. Please please don't give me sh*tty group members again, I will absolutely DIE.

4. Did not manage to get a place in the stupid Maths workshop after all. Looks like I have to study it on my own and hope that my memory can recall something.

Reasons why Week 2 was slightly less horrible than it should have been:-

1. Turned out to be a blessing in disguise that I finished reading Chapters 4 and 5 for CLAW last week, it was actually meant for THIS week; which means I have no CLAW readings for this week because I've already read all that stuff about ratio decidendi, obiter dicta etc. Yay!

2. SUMS is doing Faure's Requiem in D Minor this semester, and I am totally hooked to the 'Introit et Kyrie' and 'Libera Me' movements. The music truly haunts you and tugs at your heartstrings. Have yet to hear Vivaldi's Gloria yet though.

3. Amazing what a good day's rest can do. I'm feeling much better than this morning :) Eventhough I have "welcomed" the return of my horrible cough :(

4. Surprisingly, there's no music coming from the Wool Room so looks like I can get some sleep tonight :)

Have run out of lame excuses so am going to sleep now. I promise (for the umpteenth time) to elaborate more when I have a spare moment.

Back to Work

2010-07-27T23:23:00.002+10:00

Oh God it's only the SECOND day of the FIRST week and already I haven't read my Macro notes for tomorrow's lecture. And horror of horrors, I have to sign up for a Math workshop for my ECMT1010 because it's been nigh 3 years since I last did Add Maths and about a year since I did C4 so I can safely say that I no longer remember things like permutations and combinations, natural logarithms, exponential functions, geometric and arithmetic progressions etc. This is actually quite embarrassing, I did get an A1 and A after all but I suppose time ravages the brain.

More on Sem 2 later, must get back to reading.

Catching Up

2010-07-14T23:30:00.005+10:00

Last post was ages ago zomg. Even the World Cup is over. But let's try to get a little bit up to scratch and without further ado...*drum roll please*..The winners of the 2010 World Cup are...

SPAIN! :)

There he is, their gorgeous captain Iker Casillas (of Real Madrid) celebrating an incredible double of winning both international titles in 4 years, Euro '08 and now the big one, the WC. The game itself however left a lot to be desired; as the Dutch sadly decided to resort to strong-arm and dirty tactics in a bid to unsettle the fluent, passing game of La Furia Roja, which is their main weapon. Main offenders included Mark van Bommel and Nigel de Jong, both guilty of horrendous fouls on Spanish players. de Jong was extremely lucky to remain on the field after an extraordinary kung-fu kick on Xabi Alonso's chest. A sending off seemed imminent in an extremely bad-tempered match where no fewer than thirteen yellow cards were dished out and true enough, Dutch centre-half Johnny Heitinga was given his marching orders by referee Howard Webb with 10 minutes remaining in extra time. That seemed to be the turning point in a listless game which seemed destined to go into penalties with the score locked at 0-0 with 110 minutes already played. However, from a goal kick which Casillas launched high upfield; the Spanish nicked a goal out of nowhere when Fabregas collected Casillas's long ball and slid an exquisite pass through the heart of the defence to Iniesta; who made no mistake with a sharp finish into Stekelenburg's right corner to give La Furia Roja the lead with 10 minutes to go and surely their first World Cup title. The Dutch players furiously appealed for offside but to no avail. Within a few minutes, it was all over and wild, ecstatic celebrations soon broke in Madrid and in Johannesburg Soccer City stadium; with Casillas seen weeping after the final whistle. I feel sorry for the Oranje; they had a marvellous campaign this time around and to be the bridesmaid for the third time must surely be very painful. However, at the end of the day; beautiful football triumphed and no one can say Spain have not deserved their victory. So, Viva Espana and congratulations once again; they deserve it!

On a more serious note...exam results are out.

Introductory Microeconomics 91.0 (HD)

Accounting 1A 94.0 (HD)

Digital Business Innovation 83.0 (D)

Marketing Principles 87.0 (HD)

3HDs and 1D, s'not too bad considering the amount of work put in. Must work harder next term though.

And on a very delayed note...

Coogee to Bondi Walk with Daphne, Mandy, Jenny, Yu Ning and Nav (28th July 2010)

Having our delicious ribs picnic from Hurricane at the park near Bondi Beach

From L to R: Daphne, Nav, me and Yu Ning

Bondi Beach..nothing too spectacular though. Overrated.

More pics later, something wrong with iPhoto atm.

Home Sweet Home

2010-07-05T17:51:00.003+10:00

Hujan emas di negara lain, hujan batu di negara sendiri, lebih baik di negara sendiri.

Indeed.

Strolling Around Sydney

2010-06-26T18:47:00.022+10:00

It's been exactly a week since exams ended, but I've been keeping busy sightseeing:)

Tuesday 22nd June

Been wanting to go on a walking tour of Sydney's CBD, so Esther, Neil, Michelle and yours truly decided to brave some truly horrible weather and venture into the heart of the hustle and bustle of Sydney.

A shot of Notre Dame Uni, which is a mere 10 minutes walk away from us

The underground tunnel leading to Town Hall train station along George Street

A shot of the inside of QVB building

Town Hall's iconic clocktower

We also paid a visit to the huge Woolie's on George Street where the other three bought sheep and emu oil creams (?). Neil and Michelle elected to go back to IH for dinner but the two of us were on our last ounce of patience with IH Food, so I decided to introduce Esther to one of the best places to satisfy 'Laksa cravings' in Sydney, Golden Tower in Kingsford. No more Malacca Straits, thank you very much! At the same price, Golden Tower's deliciously milky, santan laksa brims with flavour and deliciously juicy chicken, char siu, prawn, sotong and tou fu pok, topped off with fried onions which adds a different dimension to the flavour. Scintillating.

Malacca Straights who? :P

Also watched the farce known as France's WC campaign come to a whimpering halt as they crashed to a 2-1 defeat to hosts South Africa. Les Bleu's (and mine and Esther's) misery was complete as Bordeaux's gorgeous playmaker, Yoann Gourcuff was sent off early on in the first half; leaving us devoid of any man-candy for the rest of the game.

Wednesday 23rd June

Went to Paddy's Market and Broadway to buy garlic for our 'Camp Cook-Out/WC Marathon' at Esther's place that night. Bought half a kilo of sweet cherries at Paddy's, got discount just by speaking Canto hahaha~

Before that however, we attended Soo-Jae's 22nd birthday party/End-of-sem party at the coffee room which ended up in erm...quite a few red faces. It was really fun though to cut loose and binge on free pizza and booze after the stress of exams. Props to Soo-Jae for taking the trouble (and expense!) to organize such a great party. Although it was quite a shame that not that many people turned up.

All the girls of IH who attended the party. Clockwise from far left: Jin Ee, Laura, Meredith, (don't know her, not from IH), Emila, Lisa, birthday boy Soo Jae, me, Yu Ning, Marian, Esther, Nav, Hira, Leah, and Sarah.

After we had sobered up, it was WC time at Esther's place! Life doesn't get better than England v Algeria live on the telly; munching fabulously delish garlic pasta, chocs and chips (thanks Esther :3) surrounded by a whole bunch of fantastic people (Sarah, Yu Ning, Neil, Emila, Marian and the owner of the room). Admittedly, it was only Neil and I watching the game; the others got sidetracked (non-football fans LOL). After WC, we watched Wimbledon!!!! Federer against some guy called Bolo. Again, only me and Neil actually understood anything. However, we only managed to watch the opening set as it was really, really late and my eyes were in danger of permanently closing. Said goodbye to Jason and Sherry, who dropped by to deposit some of their stuff at 3.30 am.

Thursday 24th June

Since Meredith was leaving for Texas the next day, Nav arranged for a girls' day out at Watson's Bay. There were six of us; Meredith, Nav, Esther, Lisa and Yu Ning. We took the 11.10 am ferry from CQ to Watson's Bay. It was a pleasant half an hour journey; with the sea spray splashing our faces and a cool wind whipping our hair about. Watson's Bay is somewhat similar to Manly; awesome scenery and a 'walking trail' up a cliff that culminates in the Hornsby Lighthouse (which was built in 1858) near the end of the trail. Along the way, we passed by a nudist beach (!) hehehe. Luckily, there was only one nude man who was camping along the rocks so thankfully, our minds weren't permanently scarred by any near-pornographic images.

A view of the Watson's Bay marina

The walking trail that we took that day turned out to be the South Head Heritage Trail. I had already climbed it's twin; North Head Heritage Trail at Manly earlier on in the year. Nothing too challenging; no steep uphills or perilous trails *shame*.

Yu Ning and I :)

On top of the erm rock (not world hehe)

The famed Hornsby Lighthouse, the main attraction at Watson's Bay. It was built way back in 1858 when the British were still colonising Australia

For lunch, it was some pretty awesome fish and chips from the famed Doyle's Fisherman's Wharf which was right next to the pier. The portion of chips served was way too big, so yours truly decided it would be a *smart* idea to feed the excess to the gulls. BIG MISTAKE. I will never forget the horror of seeing so many birds lining up like an army, facing me; each wearing horribly grim expressions and the mad cloud of feathers that followed each handful of chips I threw out.

Our extremely fattening lunch, Doyle's specialty golden fried fish and chips in batter with fries and the accompanying special sweet chilli plum sauce

Seeing as we had ingested at least half a can of oil (calories!!!) for lunch, Yu Ning, Esther and I took a slow, steady walk back to IH from CQ, while Nav and Meredith went to Paddy's Market to buy souvenirs.

Also managed to catch the thriller that was Italy v Slovakia that night with Esther and Neil. IMHO, Italy weren't thattt poor, just guilty of some wasteful finishing from de Rossi and di Natale's wayward shooting letting the Azurri down in front of goal. Slovakia made them pay in the 25th minute as Robert Vittek stunned the defending world champions with a nice right footed finish into Marchetti's right corner to give the unfancied Eastern European WC debutants an unlikely lead. That was surely the signal for some Italian pressure, and create chances they did. But again, bad finishing was the cause of the score remaining 1-0 to Slovakia at the break.

The second half saw Italy grow more and more into the game but the Slovaks held firm and even managed to create a few openings which had they taken, would have instantly killed the game off. Italy pressed hard, pouring forward in search of that equaliser. But suddenly against the run of play, man of the moment Robert Vittek looped a beautiful lob over Marchetti's head from a Slovakia corner to make it 2-0 in the 73rd minute, and effectively kill of Italy's hopes of making the last 16.

Game over? Not so. On 81', Vincenzo Iaquinta's shot on goal was saved by the Slovak keeper but luckily for the Azurri, di Natale was there to side-foot the rebound home. 2-1 Italy with 9 minutes remaining, game on! A few minutes later, Quagliarella had the ball in the net but was stunningly, flagged for offside. Drama man. The three of us had yelled with excitement, thinking that Italy had equalised but we were dissapointed.

Slovakia finally extinguished any hopes of an unlikely Italy comeback when some sloppy defending saw Kopunek score with a stunning lob to make it 3-1 to Slovakia, and book their safe passage to the round of 16 against the Netherlands.

But the game wasn't finished yet. In the first minute of stoppage time, Fabio Quagliarella hit a brilliant strike from 25 yards out to make it 3-2, but it was simply a case of too little, too late as the defending champions bowed out of the tournament with a miserable 2 points; bottom of their group and below even tournament lightweights New Zealand. This marked then the first time in WC history that the two previous finalists were knocked out at the very first hurdle.

Friday 25th June

Spent a quiet day at IH doing laundry. Said goodbye to Neil, Marian and Elizabeth :( On a happier note, watched Roger Federer return to (near) his best with a straight sets demolition of Arnaud Clement in the 3rd round of Wimbledon after an alarming earlier two rounds.

Saturday 26th June

Afternoon walk to Glebe Markets, my second time there. Spent a most enjoyable 3 hours wandering around, taking in all the vibrant colours of Glebe and soaking up the atmosphere of the busy, little suburb. We walked the whole of Glebe Point Road and ended up playing swings at Foley's Park hehe.

Foley's Park where Yu Ning and I relieved our second childhood

WC Round of 16 Contenders:-

USA

Ghana

South Korea

Japan

Chile

Uruguay

England

Brazil

Argentina

Mexico

Spain

Netherlands

Portugal

Germany

Slovakia

Paraguay

Tonight:-

USA v Ghana

Uruguay v South Korea

Predictions: USA and Uruguay to make it to the quarters

Love Quotes Part II

2010-06-23T03:51:00.003+10:00

Part II is up, enjoy :)

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired -Robert Frost

Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.' -Erich Fromm

It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Life is the flower for which love is the honey. -Victor Hugo

Love does not dominate; it cultivates. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop. -H. L. Mencken

Love is the child of illusion and the parent of disillusion. -Miguel de Unamuno

Love takes up where knowledge leaves off. -Saint Thomas Aquinas

Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye. -H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

END OF EXAMS

2010-06-21T20:52:00.004+10:00

Yup, it's OVER yay! MKTG was easier than expected but INFS was haaaarrrdddd. The case study on Getty Images was given to us a week in advance but Andy and I only anticipated Porter's 5 Forces and the BPMN Model to come out! Mana tahu there would be digital rights management and BI Tools sob. Was quite panicky so I misread the BP question quite a few times, spent half an hour drawing the model again and again eventhough I had prepared it a week ago sigh.

Went to Vivid Sydney at Circular Quay on Saturday night to see the Opera House sails lit up with Lisa, Esther, Andy and Neil. Unfortunately for us, it was pretty much a dud in real life; but looked spectacular in photos! The colours that they flashed onto the sails were pretty dull; black and white along with yellow. Bored after an hour, we trekked ALL THE WAY from CQ to Darling Harbour to watch Holland v Japan! Sydney is one of the International Fifa Fan Fest Locations, 1 of only 6 in the world! There were tons of people there, but we managed to get a spot to sit down and watch the match. It was a pretty dull affair until Wesley Sneidjer rifled in one from 20 yards out; then the game started to get more interesting. Japan had the better of the chances, but Holland were still able to cope with them comfortably enough to see out the rest of the game. Awesome fun :)

The Opera House sails lit up yellow

Sydney International FIFA Fan Fest at Darling Harbour

L to R: me, Lisa, Neil and Andy at CQ

Me and Lisa at DH

Yesterday Esther and I had a marathon football session, watching Italy v New Zealand from 12 am to 2 then Brazil v Cote d'Ivoire from 4.30 am to 5.30 am. We only lasted one half, my yawning was getting uncontrollable! The Azurri v All-Whites game was pretty good, NZ shocked the reigning world champions with an early goal but the Azurri hit back with a Iaquinta penalty after a very harsh decision by the ref to award them a pen. For most of the second half it was all Italy eventhough NZ had some decent chances to wrap up the game. We cooked pasta in the middle of the night while watching the game keke.

Everyone's going home so soon, I'm the last to leave!!!! Please 1st July come faster...Hokkien mee and nasi lemak, I miss you!

Had nothing to do today (EXAMS ARE OVER! How many times have I said that already hehe) so Esther and I went wandering around Camperdown campus and Glebe. Can't wait for Yu Ning and Daphne to finish their exams, we've got a busy weekend lined up! :D

Uh-oh 3 am already better go to sleep. Hot breakfast tomorrow. May just decide to screw it though, the hash browns taste like fish anyway. Going wandering around Sydney CBD tomorrow, I love being free :D

PS Changed my blog design for the first time in 2 years, am so proud :)

WC 2010:-

Brazil 3 Ivory Coast 1 (KAKA GOT SENT OFF ZOMG)

Portugal 7 N. Korea 0

Italy 1 New Zealand 1

2010-06-16T23:02:00.002+10:00

I. Will. Study.
I. Will. Read. My. Marketing/Economics/INFS whatever sh*t is left to read.
I. Will. Not. Freak. At. The. 300 plus pages I still have to read for MKTG.
Only 4 more days..arrrrggghhhh.

2010-06-15T19:13:00.000+10:00

God, only you know the very depths of my despair now.

:)

2010-05-26T19:17:00.003+10:00

My tutor wrote this on my Accounting midsem paper. How adorable is that!

Little Snippets

2010-05-24T20:20:00.004+10:00

Just a few little updates:-

1. Against all odds, Blackpool narrowly beat Cardiff 3-2 in the Championship play-offs last Saturday to clinch a spot in the top flight next season after an absence of 39 years. A warm welcome to the Seasiders who will join Coco-Cola Championship winners Newcastle and runner-up West Bromwich Albion in the EPL for the 2010/2011 season.

2.IH Food Fair last Saturday!!! It was awesome awesome fun, eventhough I only helped with half the cooking (more on why next line), AND we didn't win :(. Team Malaysia comprised Wen Hao (leader in name), Kevin Kang (de facto leader), Young, Mandy, Esther, Daphne, Ruiting, Caren and her brother Ah Mok, Yu Ning, Liz and myself. Seeing as Malaysia had won for the past 3 years, none of us were keen to break our winning streak. After a long deliberation, we decided on roti canai, nasi lemak, bubur cha-cha, sea coconut and longan, curry chicken, honeydew sago and teh tarik. Sounds delicious right? The others started cooking at around 10 am, while Mandy and I designed the menu. At around 2pm, I joined the others at Wen Hao and Ruiting's place. While Yu Ning and I decorated the menu, the others were having great fun trying to reproduce the great taste of Malaysian desserts! Caren and Ah Mok were cooking up a storm with their nasi lemak and curry chicken, people from other teams kept on wandering into their unit because of the delicious smell haha. At around 3 pm, Esther, Yu Ning and I fried 30 pieces of roti canai using a back-burner, which was sooo fun! Sadly, I had to leave at 4.45 pm as I was singing in the SUMS concert that night, but my wonderful friends managed to save me some stuff from the Food Fair so I didn't miss out completely :). We finished off the night with some Malaysian bonding time by watching 'Hitch'.

3. Mozart's Mass in C Minor! Wow, it was such an amazing experience to sing in a real concert, with a professional orchestra. The audience only numbered no more than 150, but it was still truly such a wonderful feeling to bring one of the most beautiful and haunting masses ever written to life. And by some strange coincidence, I happened to glance up at a stained glass window depicting Mary and the infant Jesus just as the soloist was singing the words, 'ex Marie a virgine.." during Laudamus-te. So poignant. The sound that we were producing was magnificent; even Greg admitted that. If I have the time next semester, I'd love to do it again. The only blip was the mini coughing fit I had during the matinee performance on Sunday after the first two movements; I was absolutely terrified that my coughs would echo around the Great Hall, distracting the orchestra and incurring the wrath of Greg!

4. ASSIGNMENTS ALL DEAD DONE AND DUSTED WHEEEEEEEEE! I finished the Accounting assignment a week early, and although I still have to build the database for INFS1000, it still doesn't discount the fact that all my WRITTEN assignments have been successfully handed in. I need a break, 4 assignments in one week is really no mean feat, and my dark circles are extremely prominent.

5. David Villa has finally put to bed months of speculation by joining Barcelona in a 40 million euro deal. Now the burning question on everyone's lips is: Will Cesc Fabregas be joining him? Reports coming out of London seem to suggest that it is only a matter of days before Cesc rejoins his hometown club, as he has finally gotten fed-up with the Gunner's (dis)abilities to win trophies at the top level. I think he'll go, but we'll just have to wait and see. Lastly, Ben Foster has finally put an end to his Man Utd nightmare, joining Birmingham in a 6 million pound deal.

6. Inter have become the first Italian club to win an unprecedented treble; beating Bayern Munich 2-0 in the Champions League final 2 days ago to complete a hat-trick of titles: Serie A, Italian Cup and European Cup. Congrats to Jose Mourinho, who became the youngest manager in history to win the CL with two different clubs. But will he be at Inter or Real next season? Another question that's just dying to be resolved.

Group Work

2010-05-24T19:08:00.006+10:00

Question: Group Work should be made mandatory for all subjects because it is beneficial for students. Discuss. The word count should not exceed 700 words.

Word Count: 693 words

Group Work is defined as "a formally established project to be conducted by a number of students in common, resulting in a single piece of assessment or a number of associated pieces of assessment" (University of Newcastle, 2002 as cited in http://www.academicintegrity.utas.edu.au/terms.html). It is a common method used in educational institutions all around the world as an alternative method to complete projects as opposed to individual assignments. This essay aims to examine the demerits of imposing group work as a mandatory part of the assessment structure for all subjects and its possible effects on those affected.

I am of the opinion that group work should not be made mandatory; instead it should be banished to the very annals of the world, never to surface again. According to a survey done by Ford and Morice (2003), a staggering 54.8% of students chose individual assignments over group work. This is not surprising, given the often unfair nature of group work. From that same survey (ibid, 2003), an overwhelming 56.1% students were of the opinion that firstly, the marking of group projects was on the whole, unfair. The main reason that this phenomenon occurs is firstly, due the possible incompetent nature of group members. It is not uncommon for students to be unable to pick their group members. If good fortune deserts you, one could actually find themselves lumped with the class dud or that lazy dude who never attends class. Incompetence mostly arises from a weak grasp of the subject matter being taught due either to non-attendance of classes/lectures, a weak grasp of the language, laziness or sheer stupidity.

This scenario leads to my second point, where group work is often unfair due to the 'free-rider' problem and the unethical nature of group members ie the unequal contributions of group members. A free-rider is defined as a "party that enjoys a benefit accruing from a collective effort, but contributes little or nothing to the effort" (http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/free-rider.html). Free-riders mainly comprise lazy students who constantly skip class, overly dependent students or they may just simply encompass apathetic group members. Over-reliance on 'good' and 'competent' students then becomes prevalent, as these free-riders are unable to contribute meaningfully to the group assignment; having little or no understanding of the subject at hand. This creates an unnecessary burden and heaps more pressure on the other group members as they are forced to double their work load in order to cover for their colleagues. Since group projects are marked as a whole; these students cannot afford to do otherwise for fear of jeopardizing their own marks. As the Malay saying goes, "If there is one drop of bad milk, the entire thing will be spoilt".

There are arguments that group work can be made fairer for all by having students fill out peer-assessment forms; forms in which students are able to rate their peers' work contribution in order to give the marker some feedback on how the work distribution was skewed. It is a good idea in principle; however the resulting red-tape often renders the whole exercise meaningless. For example if a student rated his peers at less than 100% and this triggers an academic appeal process comprising group interviews etc, this would be very messy for both student and teacher. Furthermore, it might lead to 'bad blood' between group members. In most cases, students would probably just give their peers full marks in order to avoid the whole hassle of going through the academic appeals procedure which of course defeats the entire purpose of the peer evaluations.

In conclusion, there is no denying that group work is beneficial for students in terms of building collaborative skills and encouraging interaction and communication. However, this is with the very unrealistic assumption that all group members are on the same page, and work well together thus making it a mutually beneficial and enriching learning experience for each other. I reiterate my stand again that group work should not be made compulsory as they are a burden to students who suffer as a consequence of irresponsible and incompetent team members. No one person should be made to suffer as a result of another's laziness.

References

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/free-rider.html, The Business Dictionary. Accessed: [24th May 2010]

http://www.academicintegrity.utas.edu.au/terms.html, University of Tasmania Academic Integrity Definition of Terms. Accessed: [24th May 2010]

Ford, M. and Morice, J., 2003, How Fair Are Group Assignments? A Survey of Students and Faculty and a Modest Proposal, Journal of Information Technology, Volume 2

Quick Quotes

2010-05-18T22:40:00.005+10:00

Was randomly browsing and came across some truly awesome love quotes.

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love -Albert Einstein

Love doesn't make the world go 'round; love is what makes the ride worthwhile. -Franklin P. Jones

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia -- to mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god or an ordinary young woman for a goddess. -H.L.Mencken

If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question? -Lily Tomlin

Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important. -Lisa Hoffman

You know you're in love when you don't want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams. ~Dr. Seuss

Love is the poetry of the senses. ~Honoré de Balzac

Love is a game that two can play and both win. ~Eva Gabor

The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of. ~Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670

True love stories never have endings. ~Richard Bach

Love means nothing in tennis, but it's everything in life. ~Author Unknown

Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination. ~Voltaire

True love is when you put someone on a pedestal, and they fall - but you are there to catch them. ~Author Unknown

Love puts the fun in together, the sad in apart, and the joy in a heart. ~Author Unknown

Trip over love, you can get up. Fall in love and you fall forever. ~Author Unknown

It's so easy to fall in love but hard to find someone who will catch you. ~Author Unknown

References

Lewis, J.J., 2009, Love Quotes, from Wisdom Quotes: Quotations to Inspire and Challenge. Available at: http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_love.html. Accessed: [18th May 2010]

Quotations About Love, 2010. Available at: www.quotegarden.com/love.html. Accessed: [18th May 2010]

2x

2010-05-16T21:56:00.003+10:00

For the first time in their history, Chelsea clinched a domestic double, beating Pompey 1-0 in the FA Cup Final yesterday to put the icing on what has been a most triumphant year.

A Didier Drogba free-kick was enough to see the newly-crowned PL champions through, after Kevin Prince-Boateng had his penalty and what was potentially a match-turning moment saved by Petr Cech. Alarmingly, Frank also had a chance to seal the match with a late penalty but he shot just wide of James' post. Not that it matters much (thankfully) but this is the second time this season that Frank has missed a penalty in crucial matches. Could this be a problem in the future? Something that rather soured what was a sweet victory.

It was a rather drab affair though, nothing like last year's final against Everton which was full of fire and passion, filled to the brim with lively attacking football and finished with a late Lampard winner. Pompey battled valiantly but Chelsea were far from their best and their passing seemed a little disjointed at times. It was even worrying at times how a Pompey through-ball would sneak past the Chelsea defence! 5 times we hit the bar before the goal finally went in, and Chelsea nerves were pretty edgy as we tried to get the second goal but found James in superb form.

The final whistle couldn't come soon enough, but thankfully we were celebrating a successful defence of the FA Cup; our 4th in 5 years and celebrating being only the 7th English team to win a history-making double.

And also, congratulations to Didier Drogba for beating Wayne Rooney to the Golden Boot and Petr Cech for winning the Golden Gloves award for the 09/10 season, well done boys!

We Are The Champions!

2010-05-10T23:55:00.004+10:00

What a way to end their PL trophy drought! Knowing that only a win would guarantee them top spot, the Blues put in a masterclass to destroy a hapless Wigan side reduced to 10 men at Stamford Bridge, putting EIGHT goals past them and smashing the record books to become the first ever team to score more than 100 goals in the Premier League (103) and the first top-flight side to do so since Spurs in 1961.

Nicolas Anelka started the ball (pardon the pun) rolling with his first goal since God knows when with a simple header past Pollit. But the real drama only started when Drogba threw a hissy fit after Lamps refused (and rightly so) to let him take the penalty and try to surpass Rooney's total of 26 goals. Frank buried the penalty to make it 2-0, with Drogba apologising and admitting he was wrong after the match.

Kalou made it 3 in the second half and Anelka 4 with a volley, while Drogba finally got his goal when he powered a header into the far corner. After Cole was felled, Lamps unselfishly HANDED Drogba the ball to take the resulting penalty, who promptly made it 6. Goal no. 7 saw Didier complete his hat-trick and win the Golden Boot in emphatic style while Ashley Cole made it 8-0 in the final minute with a close-range volley.

In winning the trophy in his debut season ala Mourinho, surely Ancelotti has gone some way to casting off some of the Special One's huge shadow that was hanging over Stamford Bridge. If Chelsea win the FA Cup this weekend, Ancelotti will have done what even the Special One couldn't do: Deliver the Double.

That being said, it's been a wonderfully fantastic season. Chelsea deserved to be champions; the table does not lie. With a GD of +78 compared to MU's =51, Chelsea have showed their attacking prowess and willingness to take games to their opponents. We won because we beat all our Big 4 rivals both home and away, a remarkable feat.

Top 5 turning points of the season:-

1. Chelsea 2 Liverpool 0 (Stamford Bridge)

2. Chelsea 1 Man Utd 0 (Bridge)

3. Chelsea 5 Pompey 0 (Bridge)

4. Chelsea 2 Man Utd 1 (Old Trafford)

5. Chelsea 2 Liverpool 0 (Anfield)

More pics to come... :D

I Want to Tell You...

2010-05-09T01:21:00.001+10:00

But I won't because I'm a coward. As always.

2-0 to the Blues/IH Harbour Cruise

2010-05-03T21:48:00.007+10:00

Drogba 33' (courtesy of a careless Stevie-G backpass)

Frank 54' (close-range tap-in from Anelka's cross)

We've got one hand on the trophy already. Victory is so close, we can smell it.

But thanks to Nani's strike at the SOL, it's not over yet. Manure are still hot on our heels, a mere 1 point separates us

Wigan doing the double over us would have DISASTROUS implications.

The Latics are poor travellers and the Bridge is literally a fortress these days again; but I would never discount them. God forbid if anything untoward (such as a red card) should happen next Sunday.

But Chelsea at the Bridge; on the brink of their PL title? It would take a brave man to bet against another 7-0 thrashing; just so that we can finish off the season in style.

.........................................................................................................................................

Last Saturday was IH HARBOUR CRUISE! Yes, it was quite a big deal because it was my first formal event in Australia; and it was the first formal IH event outside of well, IH. IHMA had rented a Captain Cook cruise ship specially for the night; which would take us on several delightful journeys around Sydney harbour. The theme for the night was 'Incognito', meaning we had to come in disguise ie with a hat or a mask :)

My ACCT1001 exam only finished on Thursday NIGHT, meaning in essence, I only had Friday to shop for a dress, mask and make-up! Shock horror. I've never been a last-minute person (okay, maybe sometimes) but this time I really had no choice, because my mid-sem was way more important than this event. On Friday morning, I went to Broadway Shopping Centre for 2 hours but alas, my search was in vain. Trying not to panic, I remembered that I had seen loads of clothes shops along Newtown, so it reasoned to logic that there would deffo be some shops selling formal clothes.

It was a horribly rainy and miserable day, but I trudged all the way until Sydney Park (!) in the rain, in search of that elusive dress. The shops nearer to the city were shockingly expensive (like $100+) but my reasoning that it would be cheaper closer to the suburbs was vindicated; as the closer to Sydney Park I got; the price started to range between $40-$65. Not too bad at all.

I tried on three dresses (2 at Honey and Lemon), and one at some vintage shop but they didn't fit me well. Disheartened, I returned back to IH for lunch.

And then, my luck changed.

Two heads are definitely better than one; so since Esther wanted to buy a dress as well, she came along with me. We walked along the same route, but took the rightward turning at the fork to Marrickville which I had not taken previously. What a shame I hadn't! Turns out I missed at least half a dozen shops selling some great stuff! And luckily for Esther as well, because she found her dress at one of the shops. The clock was already showing 3.30, and I was getting worried because I had to return to IH by 5.15pm for dinner as I had BS that night. I insisted that we return to the road leading to Sydney Park and we ended up at Honey and Lemon again. This time, Esther picked out a gorgeous turqoise dress that I had missed out because it was size 10. I protested, but she insisted I try it on. And luckily I did, because it fit me so well compared to the others I bought it! And got a discount too, because this was the second time I'd visited the shop hehe. What a relief. We even found time to buy cheap masks ($2 each).

On Saturday morning, we visited K-Mart to stock up on make-up (because moi has absolutely zero knowledge when it comes to this sort of thing). Thanks to a helpful salesgirl and some fantastic input from Esther, I managed to get concealer, gloss and shadow.

Back to IH for lunch, Econs quiz and tennis.

Then it was dress-up time! Again, props to Esther for doing my make-up (eventhough I did look like a vampire at first; dark eyes and red lips). We took a bus with the rest of the IH peeps to Wynvard, before walking to the wharf. Most people came with really cool masks/wigs; Andy had some sort of grey girlish mask while Neil dressed up with an Einstein wig and red eye-shadow. Daniel B was wearing an elephant mask, while Tanco had Batman. Unfortunately for yours truly, my mask string snapped as I was putting it on, sheesh. Cheap stuff, that's what you get for such a cheap price!

There's really not much to say about the cruise actually, though we did get very excited with the free-flow of booze. I started off with white wine and had coke and vodka plus two lemon lime bitters and vodkas before finishing off with apple juice. It took a while for the alcohol to actually register in my system and it is with deep regret that I report that for a time; I was actually feeling quite ill as the four drinks I had on the trot came back to haunt me. Can't say too much about the food though; it sounded better in words than in real life. We did go up on the deck for a bit to see the awesome night-time scenery but it got really windy and cold, so we soon gave up. Unfortunately, I don't have a DSLR camera, so all my shots are pretty dark/blurry/not nice in general such a shame. Sydney Harbour truly is spectacular at night. We just pretty much hung out on the deck; boozing slowly. But the best part of the night was the disco downstairs; where everyone was just grooving (wait, that sounds silly) away to crowd favourites (Empire State of Mind, Poker Face etc) and golden oldies (like Abba). Well, we didn't actually groove; more like mucked about jumping up and down in the air making the rock sign lol. Who knew Lisa, Emila, Mio, Jihaeri, Marian etc could jump so high hahahaha. Oh and camwhoring. Not as much as usual though (I miss camwhoring with my friends back home :(( ). Unfortunately, the ship docked back at King Street Wharf at about 11 pm; just when the party was starting to heat up so it was rather anti-climatic.

Emila and I munching on mini-pies on the deck of the ship :D

Can you spot the thorn among the roses? Clockwise from L to R: Lisa, Jihaeri, Emila, Mio, Jess, Bo and me

Clockwise L to R: Andy, Jessie, Joan, me, Neil and Marian

A stunning view of the Opera House by night from the cruise ship (Photo credits to Jake)

Jake, Esther and I standing on the top deck (again, photo credits to Jake)

PS Mid-sem results starting to come out. Did well for INFS (22.5/25) but not so good for MKTG (15.9/20). Am seriously scared for MKTG Group report...have revised my expectations from HD to D.

7th Heaven Part III

2010-04-26T13:50:00.004+10:00

Amazing! Chelsea thumped 7 past tough customers Stoke City to claim their biggest ever win for half a century and in the Premier League; making it the THIRD time they have stuffed 7 past opposition at home and the first time they have done it against three different teams: Sunderland, Villa and Stoke, all whom are no pushovers. An awesome return of 33 goals scored in 8 home games has seen Chelsea's GD swell to +8, leaving them 7 better off than Utd, thanks in particular to yesterday's goal glut.

Stoke were unlucky to lose Abdoulaye Faye early on in the game to a thigh injury, and later keeper Sorensen who dislocated his elbow while trying to prevent Kalou tapping in our second of the day. But the home side were simply irresistible, and the normally stubborn Stoke defence simply wilted under the intense pressure.

Kalou started the rout in the 24th minute with a superb diving header from a similarly excellent cross from the lively Drogba. A few minutes later, Kalou doubled the home side's advantage with a sliding finish; although there will be controversy over whether the goal should have been allowed in the first place as Kalou's two footed lunge could have been deemed dangerous on Sorensen. Frank stroked home the third from the penalty spot after Huth seemingly fouled Kalou to leave the Blues in cruise control by half-time.

Ice-cool Frank scores goal no. 3 and his 24th of the season in all competitions

The nightmare only got worse for the Potters after the break. On 68', Kalou bagged his first hat-trick in Chelsea colours after firing home the rebound from his initial shot which had been saved by Begovic and Frank made it five with a delightful right-footed volley after meeting a superb cross from sub Sam Hutchinson. Sturridge scored his first PL goal for Chelsea with a neat turn and sharp finish to make it six; while even Malouda found time to smash home a seventh to wrap up a fine day's work for the Blues.

Brilliant volley with the outside of his right foot to make it five-as fantastic a goal as he's ever scored

"Are you watching, Manchester?" was the jubilant cry ringing around the Bridge as the home side sent out an ominous message to the rest of the league that they mean business this year.

Next up, a daunting trip away to Anfield. The stage has been set for a titanic Clash of the Titans; a win for the Blues is a must in order to ensure the title returns to west London while Liverpool will be scrapping desperately for that final Champions League spot. Liverpool fans are surely in a quandary now: Beat Chelsea and surely United will win the title; which would see them eclipse Liverpool's record of 19 pL titles and become the only other team besides Liverpool to win 4 consecutive PL titles. My guess is they will give the fight of their lives because although they now only have an outside chance of making 4th, they are only 2 points away from Spurs; albeit having played a game more. It's really turning out to be a most unforgettable season. Chelsea could clinch the PL title with a game to spare if they win at Anfield and Utd slip up at in-form Sunderland but my gut tells me that the title race is going to go down to the wire. Chelsea have been up and down on the road this season: winning at Old Trafford and the Emirates but being shockingly beaten at the DW, Goodison, Villa Park and WHL. It's impossible to predict what will happen next Sunday but at the moment, all the momentum seems to be swinging in our direction.

In other news...

3 Mid-Sems down, one more to go! It's Accounting 1A on Thursday and hopefully the nightmare can take a backseat for a few days. I'm pretty tired of eating in my room to save time (so anti-social!) and staying in the library until the wee hours of the morning. But whatever happens, I'm so staying up to watch Chelsea v Liverpool next Sunday eventhough I have morning church next week!

Other BPL Results:-

Arsenal 0 Man City 0
Manchester Utd 3 Tottenham Hotspurs 1
Hull City 0 Sunderland 1
Liverpool 4 Burnley 0

*Hull City and Burnley relegated along with Portsmouth

Football is a B*tch

2010-04-18T23:58:00.003+10:00

Saturday 19th April: Pundits, bookies and fans all over the world backing Chelsea to win league title for 09/10 season. 4 points clear at the top with only 4 games to go.

Sunday 20th April: Chelsea LOSE 2-1 at WHL (*groans*) and lead is cut to one point AGAIN after MU beat Man City 1-0. Suddenly, it's game on again.

Deja Vu: Guus Hiddink's Chelsea lost 1-0 at WHL around this same stage of the season to go 4 points behind Utd. We never recovered, and the PL trophy went to Old Trafford last season. If we lose the championship again, I will never support Spurs or Gareth Bale again.

Verdict: No reason to panic (according to Signor Ancelotti) but we MUST MUST MUST (3 times for each game!) win all remaining 3 games to have any chance of the trophy returning to Stamford Bridge for the first time in 3 years. However, next game is away to Anfield; a potential banana skin seeing as Liverpool will be battling hard to regain 4th spot but run-in of home games against Stoke and Wigan seems relatively straightforward. Lets hope Spurs replicate the same form and squash United as well next week, but something tells me that lightning rarely strikes twice.

The Ugliest Words in the Dictionary

2010-04-10T00:34:00.002+10:00

GROUP PROJECT DUE ON TUESDAY

Chelsea 2 Manchester Utd 1

2010-04-07T22:37:00.003+10:00

And it was at Old Trafford! The last we won at OT was during the 04/05 season, when we won the league title.

It was the first time I'd watched a BPL match here in Oz, it's great that they have FoxSports here at IH. The TV room was full of Asians (the Koreans are all Utd fans because of Park Ji-Sung lol!); evidently the BPL football-crazy spirit is still strong here even away from our ESPN and StarSports.

Chelsea dominated possession from the offset, putting together some slick moves and running circles around an elderly United midfield jaded from their midweek exertions against Bayern. God knows why SAF chose Giggs and Scholes over Carrick and Gibson; their midfield age was even older than ours! But hey, I'm not complaining. The goal which had been threatening to come arrived in the 19th minute, when a sublime Joe Cole backheel outfoxed VDS and rolled into the far corner. 1-0 Chelsea.

However, in the second half we had to put up with some intense pressure as United began to threaten. Paolo Ferreira spurned a glorious opportunity early on to put the game to bed when one on one with VDS but his shot was just wide of the far post. There were a few hairy moments, especially when SAF brought on Macheda and Nani to inject some pace into the Utd midfield but some inspired and dogged defending rescued Cech. However, Ancelotti responded by bringing on Kalou and Drogba which turned out to be an inspired substitution. Within 11 minutes of his arrival, Kalou set Drogba up from about 10 yards off and our top hitman fired a bullet into the top near corner of the goal. 2-0 Chelsea with about 12 minutes to go, game over. However, even I admit that the goal should not have stood as the Drog was clearly at least a yard offside. SAF was understandably furious though.

But 2 minutes later, justice was served when Macheda bundled the ball into the net with his hand, and the goal stood eventhough it was clearly handball. Another boo-boo by the officials. 10 minutes to go, 2-1 Chelsea game on. Were we up for a grandstand finish? Utd bombarded our goal with shots (many of them wayward though) but we stood firm. Berbatov had a fantastic chance to equalise in stoppage time but Cech made a good save to make sure it was a triumphant return to west London.

Chelsea replaced United at the summit of the BPL with a 2 point cushion; with only 5 games to go. It's our title to lose now and that's the way we want it.

Flavours of South America

2010-03-30T19:25:00.006+11:00

With samba music playing in the background and the deliciously marinated beef melting in our mouths, it was truly a dinner to remember.

Part of the 'Around the World in 7 Dinners' series continued with us *visiting* Latin America, where Jonathan and Les had arranged a good spread of dishes from that continent.

There was the Caraotas Negras from Venezuala and Brazilian style rice:-

Papas Chorreandas (Colombia):-

Aji Meatball (Uruguay):-

Chorizo stuffed roast beef (Argentina):-

There was also chicken in grape juice (Argentina) while for dessert there was Brazilian Creme de Papaya, which was tasted like papaya mixed with milkshake. Everyone agreed it was one of the best meals we'd eaten, although even this carnivore admits there was too much meat (not a single veggie dish!). Even as I write this, my stomach is struggling to digest the huge amount of protein ingested.

On a more serious note...

Yes, the IHMA Assasination Game is in progress, although yours truly was *killed* in the early hours of this morning (circa 1.00 am) thanks to Jason Wu. He cleverly enlisted my entire floor as his *spies*, who duly tipped him off when I went to brush my teeth at 1 am. Upon my exiting the toilets, he sprinted towards me and pounced on me with his knife. I had no choice but to surrender. I later found out that he had *eliminated* my original killer, Yu Ting an hour earlier. Two kills in one hour, that's pretty good!

A few hours earlier, my quarry had escaped me by an inch. I had chanced upon Daniel van der Merwe standing alone near the mail area, and deciding to use the element of surprise to my advantage; I jumped up on him with my knife. Unfortunately, the blade of my plastic knife failed to touch him; as he jumped about ten feet in the air hence my kill was not valid. What a shame.

Still, maybe Jason did me a favour (I thanked him after he *killed* me lol) as I don't have to walk around in fear anymore, and to me it's way more fun to play bodyguard to Sherry than to play murderer.

7th Heaven Part II

2010-03-28T12:34:00.004+11:00

Chelsea 7 Aston Villa 1

What can I say? It was an irresistible performance by the Blues...My only regret is that I could not watch it live at home, but I'll probably stay up late and watch what could potentially be the title decider at Old Trafford next week.

The night was all Chelsea's, but the personal honours went to who else...FRANK :)

15'-Lamps opens the scoring with a low drive past Friedel, right-footed into the far post. 1-0 to the home side.

Frank draws first blood for Chelsea

29'- Carew smashes one past Cech. 1-1

44'- Zhirkov tripped by Collins in penalty area. Peter Walton points to the spot and Frank smashes it into the net to restore Chelsea's lead.

57'- Malouda scores to make it 3-1

62'- Zhirkov fouled again, by Dunne this time. Lamps converts the resulting penalty to complete his hat-trick, 4-1 Chelsea.

Hat-trick against Villa!

68'-Malouda's second goal. 5-1 to the hosts and Chelsea are running riot.

82'- Kalou drills one past Friedel from 18 yards out, 6-1

90+4'- Frank finds time to add insult to injury with his fourth of the game, it finishes 7-1 to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.

Frank scores goal no. 7

MOTM: Frank (duh). Just this week, he was being criticized for not putting in enough effort in recent games and basically being made a scapegoat for our failure to reach the quarters of the CL. He's answered his critics in style, with today's rout bringing his season tally to 21 goals in all competitions and 151 goals for Chelsea, making him the club's 3rd highest leading all-time goalscorer.

Verdict: A job well done; 12 goals in 4 days is definitely a good way to bounce back from a difficult week.

Moving aside from Frank, yesterday was Earth Hour. Me, Daphne, Yu Ning and Mandy went to the Quad for star-gazing but unfortunately, it was an extremely cloudy night and we only managed to see 2 stars :(. So we went for our 3rd floor party where we had pizza and played Wii (sp?) WITH THE LIGHTS ON. Not a very good way to spend Earth Hour I'm afraid lol.

Beautiful Dreamer

2010-03-27T12:05:00.004+11:00

Beautiful Dreamer (Stephen Foster, 1865)

Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me

Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee

Sounds of the rude world heard unto the day

Lulled by the moonlight have all passed away

Beautiful dreamer queen of my song

Lie while I woo thee with sweet melody

Gone are the cares of life's busy throng

Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!

Yesterday was the first home BS of the semester, and we had ours at Peypey's place at Kingsford. Awesome food and company :) We cooked okonomiyaki which are basically Jap pancakes with toppings; and Jap steamboat with mushroom, radish, cabbage, tofu and beef as well. The soup from the steamboat was super tasty as they put loads of sake inside hehe. (Unfortunately), we took a little too long cooking the okonomiyaki and ended up only having 30 minutes to look at Luke 12 instead of the usual 1 hour!

How to cook okonomiyaki (Clain's recipe):-

One cup of flour

One cup of water

One egg

One cup grated/shredded cabbage

As much chicken/octopus/prawn as you wish

1. Mix everything together in a bowl

2. Add spring onion

3. Pour onto teppanyaki grill

4. Put bacon on top

5. Grill until brown

6. Put HP sauce and fried onions on top (mayo is optional)

And you're done! Simple and delicious. I am deffo trying it myself someday.

BPL:-

Saturday 20/3 Chelsea 1 Rovers 1

Wednesday 24/3 Chelsea 5 Pompey 0

(Chelsea go within 1 point of Man Utd with 7 more games to play)

Manly Again!

2010-03-20T21:05:00.004+11:00

Today was our Bible Study group's *social* ie outing to encourage fellowship among our BS group members. Clain (who I suspect is default organizer of such social events) had planned a trip to Northead Santuary up north in Manly and I must say, good choice!

There were 11 of us: me, Mike, Andrew, Vivi, Su Faye, Jessica, Clain, Richard, Peypey, Jeff and Rachel. Unfortunately, Jack, Yilyn and Su Yi couldn't make it today.

(A/N: I know what you're thinking at this point in time, looking at the list of names- that's a whole lot of "Su-s!" 3 of us in 1 group lol)

7.30 am- Slept at nearly 2 am yesterday so this was an extremely ungodly time to wake up

8.10 am- Managed to catch 428 to Circular Quay. No traffic this early in the morning so the journey only took 10 minutes instead of the usual 25.

8.25 am- Almost walk past Mike, Rachel and Richard at Wharf 3 (to Manly)

8.37 am- Others still not here yet.

8.40 am- Somehow, they managed to arrive in time and we're right on schedule boarding the 8.40 am ferry to Manly.

9.30 am- Reach Manly. Head to Coles to buy snacks and supplies

10.00 am- Walk along Manly and Shelly Beach. Played weird version of netball called captainball (sp?). Snack on Doritos and have a good ole "getting-to-know-you" session.

12.00 pm- Peypey and Mike have to go back :(

12.30 pm- Long long LONG trek to Northead begins.

Taking a picture next to the 'Hole in the Wall'. From L to R: Andrew, Richard, Clain, Jeff, Jessica, me, Su Faye, Rachel and Vivi

1.oo pm- Reach cliff with beautiful scenery. Don't believe me? Take a look :)

1.30 pm- Reach WWI bunker

2.30 pm- Reach Northead Sanctuary visitor centre, also visited site of filming for "The Biggest Loser-Australia!"

Inside the Tourist Centre, with a giant map of Manly

2.45 pm- Reach Northead Point, the highest point of Manly which is on top of a cliff. Fantastic scenery of northern Sydney

The lovely ladies of Jack's BS group (from L to R): Jessica, Rachel, Vivi, Su Faye and yours truly

3.00 pm- Reach Quarantine Station to board bus back to Manly Wharf

3.15 pm- Go to McD's to buy ice-cream cones. Wait for Rachel to buy Ben and Jerry's.

3.45 pm- Rachel still not back yet. We're kinda pissed because we missed the 3.45 pm ferry

4.05 pm- Rachel finally returns and we board the 4.15 ferry back to CQ.

5.04 pm- Caught 426 back to IH

So that's what happened today in a nutshell. This little account however cannot describe the beauty of the scenery we saw today, the excitement of hiking 10km along a nature reserve, that anticipation of experiencing the unknown and of the suffering endured in the hot sun! But the view at Northead was definitely worth the walk (and climb!); and best of all was just getting to spend time with a group of such wonderful people.

CHELSEA OUT!!!!

2010-03-17T22:49:00.001+11:00

OMG CHELSEA ARE OUT OF THE UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE!!!

Absolutely unbelievable! Damn Eto'o scores for Inter AT THE BRIDGE to make it 1-0 to Inter, and 3-1 on aggregate.

Jose Mourinho, we won't forgive you for this.

Carlo Ancelotti, we won't forgive you for making it the first time we have failed to qualify for the quarters in something like 5 or 6 seasons. Well, we might forgive you a little if you bring the PL trophy back to Stamford Bridge now that we don't have UCL commitments towards the title-run in.

Still in shock here. Oh the shame of it all.

Update

2010-03-16T21:54:00.004+11:00

Omg finishing that O-Week post was a KILLER. So glad I've got it done so far.

There are lots of things happening at the moment but I'll keep it short and succinct because I really should be doing research for my MKTG 1001 Group Project.

Main Points of Interest:-

Subjects: Introductory Microeconomics (ECON1001), Digital Business Innovation (INFS1000), Accounting 1A (ACCT10011) and Marketing Principles (MKTG1001)

Most people are taking Econs and Business Statistics A (ECMT1001) this semester instead of INFS. Am quite pissed because at enrolment, they asked me to change from ECMT to INFS because the Dean "recommended doing INFS first". I suspect because ECMT was oversubscribed and they were trying to push some poor innocents to INFS. The plus points are that since they are so few people in INFS (approx only 300), the lectures are very small so it's more personal than normal ones; I'd probably rather *suffer* during the first term when the workload is still manageable and lastly, there will be loads of ECMT textbooks on sale next sem :3. Don't get me started on the negatives though hehe.

Timetable:-

Monday: There's Econs lecture (10-12 pm), Marketing lecture (2-4 pm) and INFS lecture (4-6pm). 3/4 lectures in one day so it's not difficult to see why the Monday Blues really affect me.

Tuesday: Mktg tute (10-11am), INFS Lab (2-3pm) and Acctg tute (4-5pm)

Wednesday: Econs tute (2-3pm), INFS Pass (4-5pm) then SUMS Rehearsal from 6.30-9.30 pm

Thursday: Acctg lecture (11-1pm) and Econs PASS (2-3pm)

Friday: Acctg PASS (11-12pm) and Bible Studies at UNSW (7-10pm)

Not really a full schedule, it's a well known fact Commerce students are the laziest on campus with only 12 hours. However, it is an equally well known fact that we have tons of reading to do outside lecture hours so we more than make up for this apparent deficiency. My lecturers are Elina Gilbourd (Econs), Dr. Kai Riemer for INFS, Geoff Fripp for Mktg and no fixed lecturer for Acctg; apparently they all take turns lol. My tutors are Nicholas (Mktg), Chris (Econs) and James (Acctg). I pretty much love them all, but my fav lecturer has got to be for Marketing; because Mr. Geoff really knows how to keep his audience captivated.

Interesting Trivia:-

1. The International Women's Day and Disco was last last Friday. I missed the dinner due to Bible Studies but returned in time for the disco. It was...interesting (?). I have no intention of turning into an alcoholic so I only had two cups of Coke and Vodka. The vodka didn't even get to my head, so we were beginning to suspect that they'd scammed us. There's a Flag Dinner and Disco again this Friday. The same thing is going to happen: Miss dinner due to church and come back for disco. Only difference is that I can't drink this week because of my horrendous cough (At this point in time, the author is currently stricken with a bad touch of 'IH Cough'). Sometimes I do feel extremely regretful that I'm missing so many formal dinners (I'll be missing two more next semester and one more in June) but I feel that Bible Studies is something of a commitment to God; and you can't just walk out of a commitment with God for material pleasures. God is merciful as well; I'm not missing every event; the IH Ball and the International Food Fair are on Saturdays, so cheers!

2. Last Tuesday was the first installment of 'Around the World in 7 Dinners- Pacific Region' and they served us kangaroo meat. I was horrified at first, but I must say, it was pretty tasty. It tastes like a spicier version of beef.

3. We're singing Mozart's Grand Mass in C Minor this term for SUMS

4. PASS sessions are pretty cool, they're a great way to meet new people

That's all for the moment, feeling quite lazy to blog now. GET BACK TO STUDYING!

Oh last note on Chelsea of course:-

Since losing to Man City, we've beaten Wolves 2-0 away, lost to Inter 2-1 at the San Siro and beaten West Ham 4-1 at home. Return leg for CL is tomorrow night I think. We're currently sitting second, a point behind Man Utd with a game in hand and level on points with Arsenal; ahead only on goal difference. Only 8 or 9 more games to go.

Okay so it wasn't that short or succinct. But yea, whatever haha.

O-Week

2010-03-02T21:57:00.012+11:00

Starting backwards, since the photos were uploaded that way haha. Forgive me, the writing's a little haphazard as well because of the order of the photos.

Sunday 28th February

Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade at Oxford Street and CBD. Due to download limit, I've only uploaded three pictures...but you get the *picture* I hope.

Some of the floats on display

The only reason I managed to get such a good view was that Marian and I managed to squeeze our way to the front. It was so noisy and crowded; our hands got really tired from holding up our cameras to take pics. Thankfully, the crowd eased a little soon after and we managed to get to the second row; where we had a fantastic close-up. It wasn't all gay pride though; many groups took the opportunity to make their stands on certain issues clear: Taronga Zoo were advertising their "Save the Tiger" campaigns, there were demonstrations on marriage equality etc. But the parts of the parade with the transsexuals and gay men dancing (and almost baring all) were a little disturbing.

(Disclaimer: Please remember that just because I went for this festival does not mean I condone/support these kind of relationships. I just went for the experience. Period)

Saturday 27th February

Duck-Feeding at Victoria Park and Glebe Markets

There are no pictures of the ducks because there weren't any.

But here's Glebe market, a more localized version of Paddy's. It sells some pretty cute trinkets/souvenirs and stuff like second-hand books and clothes. After that, we adjourned to the IH Rooftop for ice-cream :)

Friday 26th March

AMAZING RACE!!!!!

That's all of us! Too small to label though... :(

Basic Stats:-

Team: BLU(E)

Group Leader: Jalal

Others: Lisa, John, Pawel, Edward and Aki

Finished: Second (Team Yellow won)

Distance Ran: 10 KILOMETRES!!!!

OMG. The Amazing Race was so much fun, but it was mega-tiring. I thought I was quite fit, but evidently not fit enough to run 10km!

There was about 30 of us, so we got divided into 5 groups of six: Teams Red, Blue, Yellow, Green and Orange.

The rules were quite simple: Cross the finish line first, complete the most number of tasks, finish all the extra challenges and you win. Marks out of a 1000. The IH organizers offered the team that could get a score of 1000/1000 a thousand bucks. Of course they dared to, the possibility of that happening was like 1/1000.

Oh God, things are NEVER that simple.

First stop, we had to run to Sydney Morning Herald stall in the Quad to get a look at today's headlines (additional challenge, more on that later)

1st station: Graffiti Tunnel, University

Task: Spray paint map of Australia, done by Lisa. Unfortunately, our water balloon got popped by Team Yellow meaning that we got marks deducted for that, so the 1000 bucks was out of the question (told you!)

Next stop: Victoria Park

Task: To feed bread to the eels with photographic evidence required. We managed to eventually coax the eels to the surface but the water was super murky, so we only managed a blurry shot.

Along the way, we stopped to take a pic with guards in uniform (additional challenge)

2nd station: BI-LO, Broadway Shopping Centre

Task: Put a condom on a banana to promote safe sex LOL

Walking to UTS

Next stop: UTS

Task: Find out what floor Vertigo newsletter office is located at. Damn UTS people all gave us the wrong answer (they were trying to sabo us!!!!) . Unfortunately, we misunderstood the task a little and thought they were asking us where Vertigo newsletters could be found. Thinking we would sabotage the other teams, we *smartly* stole away the entire stash of Vertigo at one booth and hid the rest.

3rd station: Central Bus Station

Task: Sing Ke$ha's "Tik-Tok". The Chinese tourists there must have thought we were escaped mental patients from the nearby Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

Team Blu on their way to Paddy's Market

From back to front clockwise: Pawel, John, Aki, Lisa, Jalal and me :)

Next Stop: Central Rail

Task: Find out the price of an adult economy class ticket to some God-forsaken place. Photographic evidence required.

Next Stop: Paddy's Market

Task: Take a picture of Jalal with a wig. Since we were shoo-ed out of the first shop, we planned a smash and grab raid for the second wig shop. Luckily, we didn't have to do that, we just let Jalal *try* on the wig..unnoticed of course.

Next Station: Chinatown

Task: Yell out "Wo ai dian xin" at the top of our voices

Next Stop: National Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour

Task: Decipher the coded flags (they spelt out Australian Maritime Museum)

Next Station: Darling Harbour

Task: Complete a quiz

Next Station: Pitt Street Mall

We actually took the monorail to Pitt Street instead of Pitt Street Mall, meaning we had to charge all the way up a few blocks to Pitt Street Mall; wasting a lot of time and which probably cost us first place. Due to our carelessness in solving the quiz at Darling Harbour and assuming it was Pitt Street, not PSM.

Task: Busk for songs. We sang "Tik-tok" again and the workers showered us with coins to get rid of us

Task: Find out the number of pedestrians crossing Pitt Street everyday (65000)

Next Station: Hyde Park

Task: Do the wheelbarrow around the fountain (bloody tiring)

Next Stop: Martin Place

Task: Find out the sculptor of the statue at the Reserve Bank of Australia

Next station: Circular Quay

Task: Walk to the glass elevators while being tied up with one-leg to each other. Seriously painful.

Last station: Opera House/Finish line. We were a few minutes behind Team Yellow. We had to wait half an hour for Teams Red, Green and Orange to finally show up! Since we came second, we were 100 points behind TY and since we roughly completed the same amount of tasks, we had mathematically no chance to usurp them and had to settle for second.

Additional Challenges:-

1. Take a picture with a bride and groom- Success. We did. Just that they were in a bridal magazine hehe.

2. Finish the crossword in the SMH - Failure. Edward and I got stuck halfway.

3. Stick the headline of the SMH on the forehead of 5 group members - Success

4. Take a picture with someone in uniform - Failure. Josh deducted points because someone's body was incomplete in the photo

5. Take a photo with someone in dreadlocks- Success. Taken at Central.

6. Take a photo with someone playing a musical instrument- Success. The first busker we approached at Paddy's was pretty horrible, but we managed to take a pic with some lady playing the violin in the city.

7. Take a photo with 5 of our group members soaking wet- Success

8. Take a photo of the group doing a human pyramid- Success

9. Take a photo of a glass staircase- Failure. We had no idea where to find glass staircases, apparently there was one at the huge Apple store on George Street.

10. Two members of the opposite sex in the group must swap shirts. - Success. I had smartly brought along a spare shirt, so I gave Jalal my shirt, and he wore Lisa's. Clever huh haha.

11. Keep water balloon intact- As aforementioned, failure.

12. Take a cheesy group photo, winner gets extra 50 points- Failure. Evidently, we weren't la-la enough.

Thursday 25th February

Went for some seminars in the morning I think, and the Coogee to Bondi beach walk was cancelled.

Max Brenner's at Newtown

8 pm- Went to Max Brenner's in Newtown with a whole bunch of IH people. Well, actually only a few of us (Yu Ning, Jenny, Renee, Esther and Marian) ended up at MB's as the majority went to the Irish pub Kelly's to sing karaoke!

That's the chocolate banana frappe up there, which costs $7.60. But well worth it.

Wednesday 24th March

The interior of the pub

Can you spot the crabs? They're really small!

Outside the pub :)
From L to R: Neil, Andy, me and Yu Ning

7 pm- Crab Racing at the 'Friend in Hand' pub at Glebe! It was a little bit stupid because we had to wait like 2 hours just to see 60 hermit crabs race the length of a round table, but it was still pretty good fun just soaking up the atmosphere of a neighbourhood pub. Oh and me and Yu Ning got soaked because they targeted us (we were hiding under the table to avoid getting splashed by the hose. I think they spotted us, and aimed the nozzle at us sheesh)

USU Stalls at the Quad

12-4 pm- USU Stalls at the Quad. There are over 200 clubs here, it's unbelievable. You've got the usual suspects like Commerce Society, Tennis Club, Engineering Society etc to the really unusual such as the Knitting Society, Rubix Square and Puzzles Society to even the Mr. Darcy Appreciation Society. I signed up for the AIME Mentoring Program, Debate Society, SUMS (Sydney Uni Musical Society ie the choir), and Co-op Bookshop membership. There was also SUMSA (Sydney Uni Malaysian Students Society) but I didn't sign up because I wanted to try something different. In between we had a welcome lunch at the Holme Building with all the other residential college freshers.

The Great Hall at St. Andrews

As you can see, St. Andrews has got an awesome campus!

9pm- *Breakfast* at St. Andrews, which was like a total dud. We were given to understand that we were going to have breakfast there, so we trekked ALL THE WAY there, only to listen to a thousand boring speeches by the heads of colleges; and to be told that breakfast, had in fact been cleared away at 8.30 pm. We ended up going to Hoochie Mama's in Newtown for brekkie, and then mana tahu we were locked out of the Great Hall where the Dean was giving a speech because we were too late. But I guess it was pretty cool taking a trip down to see what the other residential colleges are like. St. Andrews' grounds are beautiful, and everything there is so ancient and steeped in tradition. As you can see, the freshies even wear black robes.

Monday was my Faculty Orientation, can't remember what I did on Tuesday haha.

Saturday 20th March

Mardi Gras fair at Victoria Park, a precursor to the parade next week

Sunday 21st March

Day Trip! Went to Manly Beach with some of the peeps from IH. It was pretty cool, well worth the ferry trip and bus fare to go there. We mainly walked the beaches and or just flopped down in the shade, enjoying the sea breeze. Lunch however was stale fish and chips lol.

Aboard the ferry, from L to R: Esther, me, Nori, Anne and Tanya. Axel wasn't in the photo.

Manning Beach. It's beautiful isn't it :)

Sydney's coastline from the ferry. Picture postcard perfecto.

Note the different shades of blue..stunning

Chelsea CRISIS!!!

2010-02-28T11:24:00.002+11:00

OMFG. City 4 Chelsea 2???????

AT STAMFORD BRIDGE???

City doing the double over Chelsea???

F***.

Two days ago, we were beaten by Inter 2-1 at the San Siro in the CL, and now this. Dear oh dear oh dear. Is this the sign of another meltdown similar to last year???

I'm so worried I don't know what to do. It's true we were down to nine men in the City game and that our squad is extremely depleted now, with Ashley Cole and a whole host of other people out but really, these things should NOT be happening.

Sometimes I wonder whether it's a blessing that I'm not at home to watch in agony.

More on O-Week later, I'm too distressed at the moment to type much. Must go check the league table.

Down Under

2010-02-19T23:38:00.003+11:00

G'day mate! It's my first post from Sydney, Australia.

Lots of things are happening so fat, but suffice to say that after 9 days here, Sydney isn't looking too bad..there are a few Malaysians here and they're pretty friendly, but I really, really miss the camaraderie, joie de vivre and familiarity that I shared with all my mates back home.

Maklumlah, pertama kali merantau ke negara asing...

It's kind of cool meeting people from all over the world; so far I've met plenty of ABCs, Japanese, Singaporeans, a Brazilian, Siberian, Italian, Korean, Indian, Sri Lankan and an exponential amount of Mainland Chinese.

I've just finished my ISSU Orientation (which was really helpful, especially the talk on PR) but the real hectic stuff only comes next week; faculty, IH and Uni orientation. I really hope to meet more people there because much as I enjoy my own company, I can't go on like this for the rest of the semester.

I know I'm at the peak of the 'W' curve at present; it's still a novelty doing my own washing/ironing and being in complete control of my life. Well, not 100%...have to put up with IH food and their early mealtimes! They serve some interesting fare here, I've already sampled beef stroganoff (from Russia) and a watered down version of 'nasi goring' (with tomatoes and prawns!). But I do admit to being a little lonely; many of the students here are postgrads and it's a little weird for an 18 year old as myself to be hanging out with 25 to 30 year olds, the wavelength and age difference might just be a little too much. The Singaporeans here my age are all in a group and know each other, so boo for me.

Loving the weather here so far; blue skies and windy days. But autumn's not far away, so time to get out the umbrellas.

My major gripe is of course; the lack of interest/coverage in the BPL here. It's agonizing without my daily fix of football news/programs/radio coverage of live matches. But at least I've got a friend to talk about the beautiful game with here :)

PS Since the last post, Chelsea have gone on to lose 2-1 at Everton and with Man Utd drawing 1-1 with Villa, our lead has been slashed to the slender margin of just 1 point. Later, we thrashed Cardiff City 4-1 to move into the sixth round of the FA Cup and are due to face Wolves this weekend.

Drogba 2 Arsenal 0

2010-02-08T18:30:00.002+11:00

Chelsea players celebrate the Drog's second goal with Carlo Ancelotti and Ray Wilkins

Drogba fired home from a corner in the 8th minute, when JT flicked on Malouda's corner and the unmarked hitman bundled it into the net. His second goal came from a counter-attack, when Asharvin lost possesion in the penalty area. Lampard raced up the pitch, played in a great pass to Drogba who turned and cut back inside the penalty area; leaving Vermaelen and Clichy for dead before volleying the ball powerfully past the helpless Almunia. Game over, 3 points and Chelsea regain pole position in the table, 24 hours after United had thrashed Pompey 5-0 to go top.

More importantly, Chelsea fans show their support for JT, who was stripped of the England captaincy on Wednesday.

It's nice then that the last BPL match I'll watch in Malaysia for the remainder of this campaign should end in a comfortable victory for the Blues. I won't be able to watch our next match away to Goodison on Wednesday because I'll be fast asleep on the plane!

Fond Farewell

2010-02-05T03:49:00.005+11:00

So today was mine and Annona's farewell dinner at Melaka Street, SS2. Pooh picked me up at 6.45 pm, because dinner was supposed to be at 7pm. Supposed to be 7 pm. *Malaysia timing haha*. It was raining heavily and what do you know...the roads were jammed. So we only reached SS2 at 7.30. And then we had to round and round and round looking for the restaurant which was "somewhere near Murni". Hmph. Somewhere near Murni my foot la haha. Finally found it close to 8 pm.

The others (Jia Ern, Li-Wei, Annona and Brian) weren't there yet so Pooh and I ordered something to alas perut; cendol for her and apple juice for me. Fei Ni was busy studying for her exam next week while Ariff was sick so it was just a small, cozy party of 6 tonight.

Since Annona was the one who had recommended the restaurant, she did most of the ordering: Chicken in Butter Sauce, Lai You prawns, Tip Pan beancurd, Kangkung Belacan and some spicy fried chicken. No pictures because the others did all the clicking hehe.

At the end of the meal, it was so embarassing because we asked for the bill back, and it turned out that we were 65 cents short; and the captain had paid it for us! Omg, SO MALU. But it was nice of him. And we asked for the bill back because we thought they weren't returning us our change lol. After dinner, we adjourned to KTZ for "loh" and tong sui. Loh is basically shaved ice and sago with fruit. The mango loh was pretty good, even if it had too much sago in the end for me. Pooh, Brian and Li-Wei had honeydew while Annona also had mango. Not too sure what Jia Ern had haha.

Met my dear old friend May Suen and her bf Joshua there, and Pei Fang as well. It seems God is giving me unexpected opportunities to see all my beloved high school mates before I go.

Words cannot describe the good company and the *ahem* fantastic conversations we had, but suffice to say that it was definitely a night to cherish.

Much beloved thanks for my farewell gifts:-

4-leaf clover made by our resident origami queen, Li-Wei. If you're reading this, know that I'm going to miss you so much: Most of all our gossiping about Michael :D and our Twilight-bashing. Make sure you watch Darren Shan before I come back so that we can commiserate about how awful the movie is! You're a lovely, warm friend to have so please don't change!

Cranberry chocolate and a card from Jia Ern. (Random question: Why cranberry? Not that I don't like it (quite the opposite) but I had no idea cranberry chocs existed) Anyway, thank you ever so much for your heartfelt message, I can only thank God for letting me have a friend as fantastic as you. We've had such an awesome time together, I hope that you won't forget me eventhough we're one continent apart.

Goodbye card from Pooh. Pooh, where do I start? This is the girl who bakes for me, picks me up and is always there for me without complaint. May God bless you for being such an incredible friend, I won't forget you la! Good friends are hard to find so I make sure I treasure each and every one of them.

To the others:-

Fei Ni- She doesn't read my blog but anyway, a shout out as always to one of the best friends a person can ask for. Merci bien for being my rock of support and being a rational head when I need good advice. I'm going to miss our outings and your company incredibly, so stay in touch! (Eventhough I know you're supremely busy -_-)

Brian- Brian, if you're reading this (I know you only sporadically read my posts; too much football for your liking I'm sure), thank you so much for being an amazing friend. Conversation is always fun with you, and I'm really going to miss all the good times.

Annona- I know she doesn't read my blog too, but a warm hug to another amazing person. Life is never dull with her, and her personality never fails to liven us up. See you in Canberra okay :)

BPL:-

Chelsea were held to a dissapointing 1-1 draw at the KC Stadium but at least we're still 2 points clear at the top ahead of the 'Big One': Chelsea v Arsenal at the Bridge this Sunday. No news on JT and the England captaincy but all Chelsea fans around the world are praying that Capello has mercy.

Royal Roger

2010-02-01T03:54:00.004+11:00

12-11 to Federer, 3rd set tie-break. Roger Federer is 2 sets to love up, Championship Point #3. Forehand into the corner, Murray slams a backhand...into the net!

Roger screams with delight, the Swiss maestro has done it again. Slam no. 16, Australian Open no. 4. But the look on Murray's face is heart-rending, you really have to feel for him. He's played brilliantly, but the class of the master just shone through.

Roger and Andy; all smiles with their trophies.

But sometimes a picture can't say a thousand words. Just a few minutes earlier, Murray had struggled to hold back the tears during his acceptance speech. "I can cry like Roger, it's a shame I can't play like him." *sobs again while thanking his team* "Sorry, I'm done here." Aww cheer up Andy, you'll definitely win a Slam someday. Federer was in tears last year, and we all know what happened next.

Roger, the ever gracious winner; consoled Murray. "Andy, you're too good a player not to win a Slam so don't worry."

Chelsea 2 Burnley 1

Chelsea and England captain Terry was in hot soup after tabloids revealed his affair with good pal and former team mate Wayne Bridge's ex, Vanessa Perroncel. She and Bridge broke up in December, but the affair was alleged to have taken place while they were still together. Terry is in danger of losing the England captaincy and calls for his head have been steadily growing since news of the sordid affair broke yesterday.

But like all great leaders, he let his football do the talking. Chelsea faced a difficult trip to Turf Moor yesterday evening, where Burnley have only lost 1 at home all season. The Blues went ahead through a classic counter-attacking move which ended with Anelka poking home at 22 minutes before Steven Fletcher gave the home side a shock equaliser in the 50th after a mistake from Alex. Wave upon wave of Chelsea pressure was thwarted and it looked like we were going to squander 2 valuable points. Corner in the 81st minute, Lampard floats it in and up pops 'Captain Fantastic' ; foolishly left unmarked to head a powerful shot downwards and into the goal. 2-1 Chelsea, 3 points in the bag. A terrible character as a man/husband, but nobody can deny his quality as a leader on the pitch.

You Are The Best Midfielder In the World...

2010-01-29T01:03:00.004+11:00

...said Carlo Ancelotti. To Frank Lampard (who else :p). But I seem to remember a funnier incident in 2005 when then-Chelsea boss, Jose Mourinho made this exact same statement to Lamps...as he was coming out of the showers. Anyway, point remains is that even though its been nearly 5 years since then, Frank has somehow still managed to remain one of the finest midfielders in the world. (Not the best, I believe Fabregas of Arsenal as well as Barca duo Xavi and Iniesta deserve that distinction at the moment).

There was a time at the start of the season when I (and millions of Chelsea fans around the world) were fearing that perhaps the end was nigh; the goals were drying up for 'Super Frankie'. Running on a 10-game scoring drought, the ball just wouldn't roll into the net for him. Fast-forward a few months later, and it looks like happy days again. Scoring two marvellous goals in yesterday's home match against Birmingham and thus ending their extraordinary 15-game unbeaten run, Frank put on a masterclass yesterday, pulling the strings from midfield and slotting coolly twice past in-form Brum keeper Joe Hart. His second brace in as many league games, the signs are looking good again because as history points out; whenever Chelsea's talisman is banging in the goals, the Blues are never far from the top. Of course, this sudden burst of goal-scoring form has been put down to the tactical change from Ancelotti's favoured 4-1-2-1-2 diamond formation where Frank looked stifled and uncomfortable; to a return to our traditional 4-3-3 which allows him the freedom to get forward more often and make his trademark runs into the penalty box. It will be very interesting to see if Signor Ancelotti will continue with the 4-3-3 when the African players return, as it is also no coincidence that our recent good form has coincided with the change in formation.

And best of all, Arsenal's draw at Villa means we're back on top again with a game in hand after being knocked down to third in midweek.

Other results:-

Arsenal 0 Villa 0

Liverpool 0 Wolves 0

Man Utd 3 Man City 1 (Utd progress to Carling Cup final 4-3 on aggregate)

(Delayed) Outings

2010-01-25T02:40:00.003+11:00

It's over 2 weeks, but just thought I should put up the pics anyway :)

Lunch at Theobromo Chocolate Lounge

Kinda miserable actually...but for RM 12.90 no complaints. Still, I recommend sticking to dessert!

My BF Pei Chen :D

Had a little outing with 2 of my college mates last Friday, Jia Ern and Li-Wei. It's always nice to catch up on the gossip! Watched Legion (Umm...not bad. But I really had doubts about God's so-called loss of faith in the world. Sending angels in demon/human bodies to destroy us? I distinctly recall God vowing in Genesis that he would never destroy the Earth again. But Paul Bettany as the Archangel Michael is really a reason to go see this flick. 6.5/10) and had tea at Molten Lava (Chocolate Chip Funnel Cake isn't half bad). Am so going to miss you people LOADS when I leave :(

Yesterday, Chelsea eased through to the 5th round of the FA Cup with a 2-0 victory over Preston North End at Deepdale. With a squad quite different from the one that thrashed Sunderland, the Blues hardly broke a sweat as goals from Anelka and Sturridge comfortably ensured our name would be in the hat for the 5th round draw.

Blue Blitz!

2010-01-21T01:55:00.006+11:00

WARNING: Non-football fans/Chelsea fans go no further. This entire post is dedicated to the boys in blue.

Firstly, congratulations to Frank for being awarded the prestigious Football Writers Association Tribute Award in appreciation of 14 years of dedication and service to both Chelsea and England, as well as recognition for being one of the best midfielders in Europe for this decade. Chelsea's vice-captain joins other greats of the game such as Alan Shearer, SAF and Harry Redknapp his uncle to have this honour bestowed on them.

And blimey, he's still going strong. Nowhere near retirement.

Secondly, the game that has got the whole world sitting up and taking notice of us.

Chelsea 7 Sunderland 2

Frank celebrates his second goal in the rout of sorry Sunderland at Stamford Bridge on Saturday

No Drogba? No Essien? No problem! Sending out a message to Arsenal and Man Utd that we mean business, Chelsea hit Sunderland for 7 in a horribly lop-sided match where Lamps and Anelka scored braces, adding to a spectacular goal by Ashley Cole and one apiece by Malouda and Ballack. Sure, we conceded 2 dumb goals (a Zenden goal out of nowhere and a Darren Bent header from a corner right at the death) which took the gloss a little of what was a magnificent performance but we still got every pundit in town gushing over us.

That's 12 goals in 2 matches, Chelsea are back to their roaring best.

Movie Mania

2010-01-13T18:28:00.003+11:00

So, the first post for the year 2010. Time flies rapidly, it’s the end of an era as the years of the noughties drew to a close a fortnight ago. I’ve just been too lazy to blog since the New Year started; the last post was a month ago I think oops.

Since then, it’s been full speed ahead as I count down the days to 10^th of February 2010. My date of departure. My remaining days to enjoy Malaysian food streak by too quickly to count, pretty soon it will be time to start trying to fit my entire wardrobe into 2 suitcases.

But until those happy moments, I’ve been spending time with friends and family (though I very much doubt the Lamb enjoys the extra sibling time) and consequently suffering from movie overload. I watched 3 movies In 3 days! First I caught up with long-time BF Pei Chen (2 years without meeting up ZOMG), so we watched Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant. Yours truly is a staunch Darren Shan supporter and was horrified at that train wreck of a movie. {Full critique/bashing later on in the passage}. Then on Friday, Fei Ni and I watched Sherlock Holmes and the next day, it was Avatar with the family. I actually wanted to watch Old Dogs after Sherlock Holmes but I guess that would really have been pushing it.

Other than that, nothing too exciting: A whole host of Carling Cup/PL matches were called off last week due to the snowstorm that has engulfed Britain, so my weekend was devoid of its usual entertainment. But Man Utd and Arsenal both drew their matches, so to quote the Star; it was “All Balmy at the Bridge”, as we remain 1 point ahead of second-placed Utd with a game in hand.

Oh and did I mention that Michael Buble is engaged? “Breaking hearts all over the world, MB recently announced his engagement to Argentinean actress Luisiana Lopito” (or something like that), to quote the Daily Mail. Michael, how could you??? Well, actually as long as you keep on coming up with fantastic albums and don’t retire to start a family or something I guess I can live with this.

And another big thing: Simon Cowell LEAVING IDOL??? Oh God. That man is the life and soul of AI; the show just won’t be the same without his acerbic wit and never-ending repertoire of sarcastic commentary. Apparently he’s leaving the show to focus on the US version of X-Factor, which will begin airing in 2011. Plus, I read a rumour that he’s offered Paula Abdul the job of being one of the panel of judges on his new show. So, all we need now is for Randy to jump ship as well and voila! We have American Idol reincarnated. Oh and Ryan Seacrest as well to say, “This is…the X-Factor!” But somehow it just doesn’t have the same ring as AI.

Last but not least, I hope the government finds and catches all those responsible for the senseless arson of at least 7 churches in Malaysia; an action widely condemned by peace-loving Malaysians who do not want to see the fabric of harmony of our country destroyed by the misguided vendetta of a few extremists. I’m all for supporting the freedom of the use of the word, “Allah”. We non-Muslims do not mean to use the word in any blasphemous/sacrilegious context, so what’s wrong with allowing us the right to say “Allah”? The torching of the churches represented a dark stain on our otherwise relatively spotless history, so kudos to the government and all those caring Malaysians for being mature and united enough to weather the storm in an appropriate manner. Handled wrongly, this incident could have given rise to bloody protests and religious strife (reminiscent of May 13^th) but thankfully this was not the case. Jesus told us to forgive those who sin against us, so that’s exactly what Christians all over the country are doing. : Fighting hate with love.

Moving back to Hollywood…

I Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant

How many great fantasy books have we seen being butchered these past few years alone? That disastrous debacle known as ‘Eragon’ (Christopher Paolini) (2007), or the marginally worse ‘The Golden Compass” (Phillip Pullman- His Dark Materials Trilogy) (2007)? Other movies touted as being terrible adaptations of otherwise brilliant books include “A Series of Unfortunate Events (Lemony Snicket)”, and “Inkheart” (Cornelia Funke)(2008). I haven’t watched “Stardust” (Neil Gaiman) (2008) yet, so I can’t pass judgement. The only half decent book adaptations I saw were “Prince Caspian” (CS Lewis) (2008) and the first two HP films while on the other end of the extreme, the Twilight movies were tons better than the books. Another fantasy film coming out soon is “Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief” (Rick Riordan) (2009). The book wasn’t too great, so maybe the movie will be better.

It all started when a very good movie known as “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” exploded into cinemas worldwide and became an instant sensation, propelling the author and the books to dizzying heights of fame. Since then, countless movies have been made in an attempt to be the next “cult favourite” in the mould of Twilight or Harry Potter. So far, they’ve all flopped and Cirque du Freak is the latest victim of this unsavoury phenomenon.

IMO, the #1 rule of thumb producers/script-writers should always abide by: NEVER STRAY TOO MUCH FROM CANON. (read: Don’t change things too much from the original)

Which is where Cirque du Freak really falls short.

Top 10 Gripes: -

1. 1. Even before the release of the movie, the casting of John C Reilly as one of the fans’ favourite characters, Larten Crepsley was strongly opposed. Fans argued that they pictured Larten as tall and dashing, with angular features and a stuffy, no-nonsense demeanour. However, our fears were confirmed when the first shots of Larten Crepsley were released: Tall and chunky, with a shocking red afro-do. Sacrilege!

2. 2. The needlessly engorged role of Madam Truska from a bit-part character to one of the main attractions of the movie. Obviously meant to accommodate Salma Hayek. Her “relationship” to Larten Crepsley in the movie, further enraged us fans as we consider it disrespectful to Arra Sails, Larten’s true love who unfortunately only makes an appearance in books 4-5. The producers are going to have a real problem digging themselves out of this hole if a sequel is made.

3. 3. The casting of newcomer Chris Massoglia as the lead character, Darren Shan. Massoglia was bland and lacked screen presence; leading to him often being overshadowed by all his co-stars.

4. 4. The cheesy and cliché “movie-moral”: “it’s not what you are, it’s who you are inside.” The producers have completely lost the (pardon the pun) plot. Darren Shan is most definitely not as lame as that!

5. 5. The recasting of Darren’s girlfriend; Debbie Hemlock as “Rebecca-monkey-tail girl” and Darren drinking blood from her (vampires can’t drink blood from the freaks, it’ll make them sick). Furthermore, Debbie Hemlock is supposed to be a black girl. By recasting her as a white girl, doesn’t take make the producers a wee bit racist? Just a thought.

6. 6. Evra Von’s name being changed to “Evra von Britow” and his ridiculous portrayal as a wannabe indie-rocker

7. 7. The nonsensical casting of Ken Watanabe as Mr. Tall (Mr. Tall with a Japanese accent???). A lame attempt to inject some exoticism into the mystique of the movie.

8. 8. The vampires drinking from the shoulder (eventhough it’s specifically stated that they drink from a vein in the leg)

9. 9. The terrible CGI animations of the Little People which are again, in violation of the book

1010. The portrayal of Mr. Tiny which was all wrong

The only bright spots in the film were Josh Hutcherson (from “Zathura” and “Bridge to Terabithia”) , who played arch-nemesis Steve Leonard, future Lord of the Vampaneze and Murlough, two characters who were actually portrayed well (ie in canon). Sad to say, Josh Hutcherson overshadowed Chris Massoglia in all of the scenes, which doesn’t bode well for any future sequels. Also, the occasional blithe humour provided by John C Reilly (in his reinvented Crepsley role) provided some comic relief to an otherwise mediocre film; but Salma Hayek was really a waste of space.

When are you directors going to learn, that the only way to convert the book-fans to movie-fans is to stick to the story? After all, we book-fans make up the majority of the target audience. HP 1 and 2 were such successes at the box office because fans of the JK Rowling books found the movies worthy of the books. The problem lies in the fact that most of the time, the movies fail to meet the expectations of the fans because the producers chop and change to make it more “commercially appealing”. As soon as they began to deviate too much from the book (movie 3 onwards), the fans started to drift away. Nonetheless, it had already established itself as the forerunner to all future teen fantasy movies hence its current overwhelming box-office appeal (and forcing us book-fans to watch the movie anyway). Oh, and having lead characters that can actually act really help too. A recent example, “Star Trek” proves that you can still make a good movie without deviating from the original.

A real shame, because I had been waiting for 2 years for it to hit the big-screens.

But the movie’s not all bad. It’s a little disjointed as non-fans of the book would not understand many of the underlying plot lines but still worth a watch.

Rating: 4/10. “Good film, bad adaptation”-IMDB.com

II Sherlock Holmes

Guy Ritchie takes on the challenge of bringing the much-loved Sherlock Holmes (created by the late Scottish writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) to the big screen once more and bring us a film that leaves us gaping at the extraordinary intelligence and deductive powers of the world’s most famous detective. Thankfully, he does it with aplomb and the result is a well crafted 120 minutes of non-stop action and jaw-dropping analytical skills/detective prowess on show. Admittedly, the casting of Robert Downer Jr. as Sherlock Holmes takes a little time to get used to at first, but he is more than adequate for the role, playing a newly-reinvented Holmes to perfection (although the idea of a bare-chested Sherlock indulging in a little fight-club was unnecessary). Meanwhile, Jude Law shines as his faithful sidekick, Dr. Watson and the villains aren’t half bad either. Rachel McAdams does a decent job as the devilish Irene Adler, love interest of Holmes, which adds a little bit of romantic intrigue to the movie. I haven’t read any of Sir Arthur’s books (am planning to read Hound of the Baskervilles) so I can’t really complain much about the movie being out of touch with the original but most of the reviews online from Holmes fans have been positive, so I take it the movie does the series justice. Good strong plot and lots of suspense, moviegoers who fancy picking their brains a little should welcome this one with open arms.

Rating: 8.5/10. Plenty of twists and turns, and a cliffhanger at the end. Not to be missed.

III Avatar

The number one movie must-see of the decade, well on its way to grossing over $ 2 billion dollars worldwide (although it did cost half a billion bucks to make). Avatar is proof of the emerging trend: Mind-blowing CGI is the way to go. Admittedly, CGI isn’t everything and a winner still has to be backed up by a decent cast and storyline but this seems to be the way to making a worldwide hit. We’ve seen it before with Transformers II (great effects, decent plotline) and now we’re witnessing further proof of this theory. Avatar’s storyline is depressingly cliché (outcast from human world goes to alien planet, learns alien ways, falls in love with alien girl, fights enemies, one or two main characters die along the way, aliens win war, outcast and alien girl live happily ever after) but the lead character, Sam Worthington does a pretty-convincing job as Jake Sully (a wheelchair-bound ex-marine turned Avatar) while Zoe Saldana is decent playing whatever-her-name-is, his love interest. Other characters such as the main antagonist, the evil Colonel and the blue-skinned Navi tribe are also deserving of commendation.

Of course, Avatar is mainly associated with great special effects and we are not disappointed. Spectacular mountain ranges and a myriad of freaky looking multicoloured plants and animals, giant spaceships and spectacular fight scenes; Avatar is a feast for the eyes. The movie has enough feeling to actually make you feel for the characters, and the lines really aren’t that cheesy.

Rating: 7/10. Go there to be wowed by the scenery, not the plot.

Christmas Time's A'Coming!

2009-12-25T00:25:00.004+11:00

It's that time of the year again!

Jingle bell jingle bell rock,

Jingle bells ring and jingle bells swing,

Snowing and blowing up bushels of fun

Now the jingle hop has begun :)

1. Christmas gathering at Laundry, The Curve, 2oth December 2009

Jingle bell jingle bell jingle bell rock

Jingle bells chime in jingle bell time

Dancing and prancing in Jingle Bell Square

In the frosty air!

2. Daddy's 48th birthday at Hard Rock Cafe, 18th December 2009

Met turkey there for like the 2nd out of 3 times in 5 days hehe

Now's a bright time

It's the right time

To rock the night away

Jingle bell time

Is a swell time

To go gliding in a one-horse sleigh

Giddy-up jingle horse

Pick up your feet

Jingle around the clock

Mixing and a-mingling in the jingling feet

That's the jingle bell

That's the jingle bell rock!

PS Finally watched New Moon yesterday..it was actually TONS better than the book. I'm on Team Darren but if I had to choose, I'd go for Team Jacob. Rob Pattinson is such a..marshmallow hehe.

PPS Congratulations to Frank Lampard for winning Premier League Player of the Decade for Most assists, most wins, second most assists and 4th highest goal scorer. Frank, you're the best. Not many people could hold their nerve and score a penalty 3 times!

Welcome to the World of Mac

2009-12-14T02:51:00.004+11:00

Yup, I'm officially the proud new owner of a 13 inch Macbook Pro, a lavish going-away gift from my aunty. It costs well over 5 grand, meaning that yours truly has got her work cut out just trying to prevent it from getting it's first scratch/dent before the week is over.

Mac OS X operating system is really in all honesty, way too high-tech for me. The only thing I know how to use is iPhoto and iTunes! After more than a decade of Windows, it's a wee bit difficult relearning everything again but for this baby, it's worth the journey.

BPL:-

Chelsea 3 Everton 3 (It doesn't reek of crisis yet, but the form book doesn't make for pretty reading: Chelsea 2 APEOL Nicosia 2, Man City 2 Chelsea 1 in the last two games)

Thankfully, Man Utd 0 Villa 1 so instead of dropping points, we actually extend our lead by 1 point.

Tonight: Liverpool v Arsenal

PS Air tickets booked, accommodation (International House) settled. All I need is my medical and that visa confirmation.

Out of the League Cup

2009-12-03T18:30:00.004+11:00

Unceremoniously dumped out of the Carling Cup by the side we thrashed 5-0 at home not too long ago. Losing 4-3 on penalties (what else would it have been right?), 3-3 aet, Carlo Ancelotti's gamble to use all 3 substitutes backfired when Kalou hobbled off with an injury and we had to play most of the second half with 10 men. True, he made 8 changes to the side that hammered Arsenal, but it still hurts that we got dumped out like that. Ballack and Kakuta both missed their spot kicks, with Kakuta fluffing the decisive 5th kick. Moscow all over again. Kakuta is only my age, and I don't blame him in the least. But if only Frank was there to take it, he would not have missed...Last year it was Burnley, this year Rovers. The Carling Cup doesn't like us any more it seems.

But who cares? That's one less distraction, and I'd rather take the 3 points from Arsenal rather than lose to them and win this tie. Ask any Chelsea fan, and they'd tell you the PL title wins hands down any day over the Carling Cup.

3-0

2009-12-01T04:25:00.003+11:00

Oops it's already 1st December, the last post was almost a month ago. Lots to talk about, been busy with uni stuff and the recent UK trip.

But most importantly, 3-0 to Chelsea as we thumped the Gunners to leave them 11 points adrift of us. At the Emirates no less, sayonara to another would-be title contender.

A fantastic defensive, team performance (but plaudits to Terry and Cole) and Drogba's all-round skill and power wrapped up the 3 points in emphatic style. Arsenal played their pretty football and dominated possession, but ruthless Chelsea showed them how to do the business when the chips are down. Just a little dissapointed and a teensy bit frightened by another quiet day from Frank. I worry he's not asserting himself in big games any more, but then again he was just coming back from a thigh injury...

Drobga 43', Vermaelen (og) 45+ 2', Drogba 86'

The Impossible

2009-11-07T02:41:00.003+11:00

The Impossible has happened..I'm bored of Buble. This is, of course, a natural result of playing 'Crazy Love' approximately 99, 999 times and 'It's Time' 99, 998 times.

Lesson learnt: You can never have too much of a good thing

Big game this weekend: It's showdown time at the Bridge

Manchester United v Chelsea

PS Great news transfer ban has been temporarily lifted so we can spend in the January transfer window!

PPS Our crazy new CEO Ron Gourlay has just announced that as a fund raising project, we are selling the naming rights to our stadium. That's right, Stamford Bridge may no longer be Stamford Bridge in the future. It's absolutely outrageous. All right, it's going to raise 150 millioun pounds/the new name will still contain the words 'Stamford Bridge' but for me this is just plain insulting. Ditto St. James' Park and White Hart Lane who are also in the same situation. It's horribly disrespectful to the club's tradition and their legacy.

Lemons and Lemonade

2009-10-30T02:44:00.002+11:00

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. That's fine but without any sugar, it's still sour ain't it?

Dream A Little Dream

Originally by Louise Armstrong, sung by Michael Buble

Stars shining bright above you,
Night breezes seem to whisper, "I love you"
Birds singing in the sycamore tree,
Dream a little dream of me

Say "nighty-night" and kiss me
Just hold me tight and tell me you'll miss me
While I'm alone and blue as can be,
Dream a little dream of me

Stars fading, but I linger on, dear
Still craving your kiss,
I'm longing to linger till dawn, dear
Just saying this:

Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
But in your dreams whatever they be,
Dream a little dream of me.

4+5

2009-10-26T18:15:00.003+11:00

Chelsea's no. 8 tucking away goal no. 4

Since that shock defeat at Villa, the Blues banged in 4 goals past Atletico in the UCL and a sensational 5 past Blackburn.

Good: Only team left with 100% home record in BPL

Better: Liverpool beat Man Utd 2-0, so we're back on top

Best: After a mini drought (10 games without a goal), Frank gets 1 against Madrid and 2 against Rovers. 3 in 1 week, talk about ending the *crisis* in real style.

Pick-Me-Up

2009-10-17T03:15:00.003+11:00

I, Wong Su-Wen, am only human.

And today I have learned that it is possible to fail

Welll actually I've learnt that a long time ago.

But up until now, I've forgotten what it's like to feel that crushing dissapointment

But today I also learnt that I have good friends and shoulders to cry on

And that I must learn from yesterday's mistakes.

Sediakan payung sebelum hujan
Sediakan dayung sebelum tenggelam

And most important, don't stop believing in yourself

So tired of playing games...sometimes I just wish I could have to courage to say something! *grumbles* Stupid coward.

Sing the Blues :)

2009-10-06T14:34:00.004+11:00

Chelsea 2-0

Anelka '55

Malouda '90+1

A defensive masterclass thanks to a superb display by Terry and Carvalho, good finishing by Anelka and Malouda and an excellent display from Essien (Frank had a surprisingly quiet game) sent us back to the summit of the Premier League. The scoreline certainly did not flatter us (as claimed by Reds fans), we were mostly in control of the game save for the first 10 minutes and the last half-hour. Truth is, Hilario made some good saves; Gerrard and Torres were succesfully subdued and we took our chances. Liverpool didn't, and that's why the better side won. True, they threw everything at us after we scored the first goal and I was always afraid we would concede an equaliser, but thankfully we stood firm and the second goal killed of the game.

Carlo Ancelotti has passed big test number one.

BPL Results:-

Chelsea 2 Liverpool 0

Man Utd 2 Sunderland 2 (Excellent game, I really wish Sunderland had won)

Spurs 2 Bolton 2

The Legal Regal Eagle

2009-10-03T01:02:00.005+10:00

It started out as one of the sh*ttiest days EVER.

I went to work 10 minutes late.

I opened my wallet.

SHOCK HORROR.

My key is gone!

F***.

I can't open the door.

Past 10 am, and if you're unlucky, you're going to be hit with a RM 900 fine for late opening.

*sweats and panics*

Searches frantically for 15 minutes. Nada.

Calls boss.

Understandably, boss is furious.

Calls John.

John doesn't pick up. Maybe he's sleeping.

Calls Leng Keat. John is in college apparently.

Ask Leng Keat to bring key.

Agonising 30 minute wait.

Leng Keat finally opens shop at 11.00 am.

Phewwwwww!!!

I was so embarassed, mortified etc. It really put a dampener on the celebratory mood. I spent the entire morning writing in the little green book in an effort to release my pent-up tension and worry about the potential fine.

Thankfully by 2pm, my mood had improved somewhat (No sign of a fine notice) and my mum arrived at 1U coincidentally in time for my lunch break (she had some errands to do). So we went to Nandos to use up the RM 20 vouchers expiring that day. Mud pie for a treat hehe. Not bad, eventhough I had eaten the EXACT same thing the night before (trying to use up those damn vouchers).

Then dinner time, and the toffee banana is unveiled. A really silly thing happened after dinner though. My dad suggested that I give a slice of cake to my neighbours (Uncle Tim, who's English and Aunty Kim (who's Singaporean) and their adorable 5 year old, Katelynn). So I trotted over next door with a slice of cake in my hand.

SW: *ding dong*

WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!

*dreaded dogs from hell hurl themselves at me. Thankfully, all they managed to do is batter themselves at the gate*

Uncle Tim: Hello, who's there?

SW: Hi Uncle Tim, it's my birthday today and I thought you might like a..slice of cake? *brandishes cake plate*

UT: Sorry, what did you say again? (In the background: WOOF! WOOF!)

SW: *repeats*

UT: Sorry??

sw: *repeats*

UT: *stares* But I don't even know who you are!!

SW: *almost dies of laughter/annoyance*
*points to next door*

UT: Ohhh right! *pause*
But I don't eat cake.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ridiculous. In the end, I said Katelynn could have it.

But the *drama* wasn't ended yet.

After that little episode, I took a bath and dressed in my comfy PJs. Fei Ni had called me earlier on requesting help on an Accounts question and I trudged upstairs to the PC, cordless phone in hand.

Just as I was about to log onto Windows Live Messenger, the cordless phone rings.

SW: Hello?

Carynn: Hello can I speak to Su-Wen please?

SW: Speaking, who's on the line please?

Carynn: Su-Wen, it's Carynn here la! Hurry up and open the door, it's drizzling!!!

SW: Huh? Drizzling? Oh you're outside. BUT I'M IN MY PAJAMAS WEI!

Carynn: Nevermind just open the door la!

SW: *rushes downstairs to have a look*

SW: *Fei Ni and Carynn wave merrily outside the gate*

C and FN: HURRY UP IT'S DRIZZLING!!!!

SW: *shrieks* I'M IN MY PAJAMAS!!! SOMEONE OPEN THE GATE, MY CRAZY FRIENDS ARE HERE!!!

Just an excuse to change my clothes hehe.

I run downstairs and look around. Eh, where have they gone to?

Daddy: They're at the back of you.

And they jump out at me, having a piece of butterscotch cake from SR with a lighted candle, and just for kicks, my fav Sunway choc chip cookie.

And that was the first time I'd ever been surprised on my birthday.

Muchas gracias: Most of all, my parents, Lamb, Fei Ni and Carynn. You guys are the best!

Danke sehr: Especially Leng Keat, for saving my a** in the morning

Merci bien: Jia Ern, Brian Chin, Katherine, Avinaash and John for your lovely messages, thank you to Crystal for bringing me to Waffle World.

Grazie: Sookie, Joanne Chong, Joanne Gan, Ming-See, Yen Wei, Wei Chin, Yoong Jie, Cass, Dani, Annona, Ashton, Tiam Loong, Zoe, Ching Fay, Dinesh, Rui Zhen, Chuu Khai, Felicia, Vanitha, Pei Fang, Matthew, Wei Wern, Shi Ching, Ru Jiun, Ai Rene, Estee, JJ, Jane, Xin Wei, Wan Joo, May Wern, Miss Charity for your FB messages. That birthday reminder is so handy isn't it hehe.

Belated buddies: Kim, May Suen, Ariff, Yi Shen, Karl Shern

I'm legal people. NO MORE GETTING KICKED OUT OF MOS! :D

BPL:-
Battle at the Bridge: Chelsea v Liverpool

Come on Frank... MUST-WIN after that horror-show at the JJB last week.

Derby Day

2009-09-21T02:17:00.002+10:00

Yes it's so exciting today...

First Day of Raya and as customary, we went to my dad's friend, Datuk Jamal's house for open house. This year, he and Datin totally outdid themselves. The spread was like an international 5 star buffet...rendang, nasi beriyani, olio and carbonara spag, mashed potato, mushroom soup, 5 types of smoked beef and salmon and of course, the lasagna I wait all year round just to taste hehe. Datin's baking classes must have totally paid off..my mum and I counted at least 10 different types of cakes..tiramisu, red velvet, fruit flan, mango cheese, oreo cheese, 4 types of choco cake with pavlova and meringue...the list goes on. Didn't even have stomach to sample the apple spice cake.

And of course, derby day in the EPL!

What a cracker of a Manchester derby. My bro was off to a friend's house while my parents went to a pub to watch the game (better atmosphere gua). So that left the TV all to myself. Cracking game, superb doubles from Fletcher and Bellamy, comedic errors from Foster and Ferdinand and a grandstand finish. Credit to Owen's poacher instincts and United's never-say-die attitude. I'm not ashamed to say I was rooting for United, I hate City for trying to steal a march on JT.

Chelsea 1-0 up on Spurs in the London derby last I looked, great A Cole finish. We'll see how it goes tomorrow.

Aimless

2009-09-20T02:59:00.003+10:00

I feel so direction-less at the moment. It's like I'm on permanent freezeframe until next February. Working helps to relieve some of the monotony, but in reality it's just another way of killing time. And getting paid to do it lol.

My friends are starting uni. Or flying off. Or are busy studying. Or don't want to see me. (Okay, they wouldn't be my friends if they did that :P) Or when they DO want to see me I'm always working. And then it seems like I DON'T want to see them. You get the picture.

I feel envious. Left behind. Useless. Rotting-brain-turns-to-cheese 24/7.

There's a bitch at work.

I feel like quitting but know I'll be more bored at home.

I'm so tired of 1U eventhough I've only been working for 8 weeks.

Even football is beginning to lose its lustre.

Above all, when I'm bored with FB I know something is seriously wrong.

God, help me?????

A/N: I think I know the solution. This is what happens when I don't have anything to let my brains chew on. Academically. This process is known as stagnation.

Writer's Block

2009-09-15T18:07:00.008+10:00

Ahh I fear I am suffering from the dreaded writer's block. I just don't seem to have the will to force my fingers into typing out sentences anymore, the tendency is towards scratching out lines with my mechanical pencil in the green book the good-old fashoned way.

Just a quick update then:-

I Most importantly, looks like Carynn is not going to Exeter after all. Shame about that, especially since it was almost a done deal except for the accomodation.

II However, Tash, Joo and JJ are still leaving soon. Farewell party was at Soul'd Out two weeks ago. Incredibly, my family and I went there again last Saturday (though I said that I would never dare step in again on account of the terrible nuisances we made of ourselves).

III Bali pics are up on FB, I've got a few here as well

IV BPL:-

Man City 4 Arsenal 2 (Curse you Adebayor, curse you)

Chelsea 2 Stoke City 1

Liverpool 4 Burnley 0

Man Utd 3 Spurs 1

Sunderland 4 Hull 1

V Juan Martin del Potro def Roger Federer to win at Flushing Meadows this morning. I don't really hate del Potro so I'm not going to curse him.

The Impending

2009-09-01T14:16:00.004+10:00

When the euphoria dies down, and the curtain comes down on one chapter of life

When the emotions recede, and the sun sets on another day

When the fire extinguishes, and another page is turned in the Book of Life

...............................................................................

Time and tide wait for no man

A hopeless cause to try to arrest the relentless march of time

Tick-tock goes the clock, moving closer everytime

To that dreaded hour.

When it's time to say goodbye, we'll be there to cry

They go with our blessings and a piece of our soul

To seek pastures anew over the seven seas

It is only a new beginning.

Only time will tell if we will meet again

If our paths may cross once more

But know this; whatever is our end

Our hearts will endure as friends.

"Goodnight! Goodnight! Parting is such sweet sorrow." -Juliet, from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

PS Feeling very emo now because I think I've been reading too many blog posts about friends leaving for uni. Turns out Pooh is probably leaving as well T_T. Updates on the Bali trip later.

Chelsea 3 Burnley 0

Liverpool 3 Bolton 2

Arsenal 1 Man Utd 2

Sunderland 0 Stoke 1

Tottenham 2 Birmingham 1

Yes, it's all good

2009-08-21T13:11:00.006+10:00

Just occured to me that we look rather like the 3 bears family...there's papa, there's mama and there's baby bear hahaha. What do you guys think? :P

Anyway...first things first.

Accounting Unit 2 300/300 A (a)

Accounting 600/600 A (a) PASS

(A/N: *speechless*)

Chemistry Unit 5 83/90 A (a)

Chemistry Unit 6 115/120 A (a)

Chemistry 559/600 A (a) PASS

(A/N: Sorry Mr. Yeap...no full marks this time hahaha..I did forget the bond angle in Unit 6 after all)

Economics Unit 5 86/90 A (a)

Economics Unit 6 105/120 A (a)

Economics 568/600 A (a) PASS

(A/N: Unbelievable! I never dreamed to score near perfect marks for U5! It's common knowledge that you should thank God if you even PASS U5)

Core Mathematics 4 80/100 A (a)

Statistics II 97/100 A (a)

Mathematics 559/600 A (a) PASS

(A/N: Phew just made it with that 80 there! So grateful, thought I was going to fail; especially since I left the last question completely blank!)

So there are the final marks, and all in all there's 4 As in the bag :)

But that's not the whole story..there was quite a little bit of drama before we arrive at that happy moment when your eyes quickly scan the results slip...and you realise that the only alphabet you see is 'A'.

Okay it all started because I slept late. The previous night I meant. I think my mum was right in asking "What on earth were you doing until so late?" Good question. I was actually reading the football news online and aimlessly skimming through FB. All of which could have easily been done in the morning or the afternoon or..well in short anytime but that time. Maybe I was afraid to go to sleep, because it meant that the morning would come too soon...some sort of inside denial now that I look back on it.

Whatever it is, the point was I only slept past 2 am. And I was supposed to get up at 9.15 am. Plenty of time to watch the clock tick ever closer to the fateful hour of 10.00 am. One moment I was drifting off into a thankfully dreamless abyss and the next my mum was saying, "IT'S ALREADY 9.45! WHY ARE YOU STILL SLEEPING?!" Oh my goodness! Why hadn't the alarm clock gone off? Well, I only found out the answer last night: In my haste/carelessness, I had set it to 9.15 PM. So smart, so smart...but anyway, there was no need to describe the crazed manner in which I had to get ready. 10.15 am, and Brian called, saying that there were already loads of people there. Oh rats. Add to that the fact that I decided to change what I was wearing at the very last minute, the earring refusing to fit into the right hole, just a few bites of banana at breakfast making me feel sick; and you have all the ingredients for an absolutely disastrous day.

Finally arrived at 10.35 am thereabouts. Wow, he wasn't joking, the lower foyer was PACKED. Full of people clutching their results slip. I spotted Brian and Eu Jinn and made a beeline for them. And that's when the story takes a nasty turn for the worse. Something didn't feel right about the whole thing...Eu Jinn rushed up to me and said congratulations. ? I hadn't even collected the slip...Speaking of the slip...OMG. MY FREAKING ID! I forgot to bring it! No sweat Brian says. You can use your IC. Or driving license. The stupid part? I forgot to take my entire wallet out of my office bag. ****! I have a hazy idea of myself screaming dementedly, rushing outside to call my mum to bring my wallet. Ah...let's skip that part can we haha. All I remember was that I didn't care if I looked silly, I just wanted my results! I couldn't bear watching everyone else clutching their slips and already knowing their marks. It was agony. Li-Wei, Tasha and Joo came along to collect their results. Btw Brian and Jia Ern were already celebrating their 4As, sadly turkey had missed out on the World Award he wanted so badly by 18 marks; he scored a 282 for Acc 2.

But by far, the funniest reaction came from Tasha. Well not exactly funny, I wanted to laugh because it was so...unexpected. Upon collecting her results, she pointed to her results slip where she had obtained a B for Econs, and kept on saying, "Are you sure that's the final mark? Are you very very sure?" To which turkey and I reassured her that it was. And to my surprise and slight amusement, tears welled up in her eyes! She was just speechless with joy! Aww it was so sweet. I guess she had really been expecting to fail or something. I just feel sad that some of our classmates who hadn't done so well seemed to dissapear into the background back home though...but I guess that if I were in their shoes I would just want to go home and fall apart in private. Please don't feel sad guys, as long as you did your best you can take heart from that.

A few minutes later; to my horror, they started lining up all the 3 and 4As achievers for the photo shoot! I was sick at heart. I couldn't line up because I hadn't got my results yet! Imagine getting all dressed up in the stuffy shirt for nothing! Feeling really despondent, I flopped down at one of the empty registry tables; with T-Z being next to me. One of the attendants smiled at me, and I asked hopefully, "Can I just see?" The other Indian lady whom I recognized as being the nice lady who had helped me register for my LAN subjects last year smiled and asked me why I hadn't collected my slip yet. With a twinge of embarassment, I said that I had forgotten to bring my wallet.

What happened next...well, I will forever be grateful to her. She asked why I hadn't gone to the Registry to get a slip acknowledging that I had forgotten to bring my ID but which authorised me to collect the results anyway. I wailed that I had no IC to verify it, but she told me to drop her name; Sharon and just to try anyway. I had nothing to lose, and my desperation was compelling enough for me to risk it. I hurried to the Registry and explained my predicament. I was careful to mention the name Sharon and somehow, I think that was what made it work. Unbeknowing to me, Brian had followed me to the Registry. Probably was going to hound my every step until I got the slip! Anyway, this horribly sour-faced lady came out and wrote the permission slip for me, shooting murderous glances at me eventhough I had done her no wrong. But even her grudging manner and sour-puss attitude could not mask my elation and had it not been for those accursed heels, I swear I would have sprinted all the way back to the lower foyer. No words could describe the triumph I felt. But in hindsight, triumph at what? I hadn't gotten my results yet. Just a ticket to get them half an hour earlier.

Back at the table, the ladies smiled to see me, and handed me the slip. The moment of truth. I steeled myself not to look at the Accounting marks first, but ran my eyes downwards..A..A..A.................A! YES!

And then...

There it was: Accounting 2 300/300.

OMG.

(A/N: I swear that expression was invented for scenarios just like this!)

I think I just kept on shrieking OMG like 10 times or something, I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. The ladies and Brian and Jia Ern were bending over the slip too, as if to verify that I wasn't having an optical illusion. I mean, you can go on and say that I shouldn't be surprised, I should expect this...blahblahblah but the truth is, I don't expect it. I really don't. Sure, a tiny part of you knows that you can achieve it but there's a big difference between dreams and reality. I'd always wanted to emulate my cousin Sarah, for winning a World Award (she got Further Maths, but unfortunately I'm not a maths genius) and getting her name in the papers and HELP brochures. Everyone dreams of winning a World Award. But I don't tempt fate by telling myself that I'll surely get it because I don't want to end up dissapointed.

And the rest of the morning...well let's just say it was one of the best times of my life. Ever. Everything seemed twice as funny and it seemed like our adrenaline levels were at record highs. I had no idea what we were gibbering about but it just seemed that we were taking the mickey out of everything and everyone. It's always nice to celebrate with friends who did well as well, so it was really great that Brian and Jia Ern were there to lark around with. When your friends don't do well, you just automatically have to make yourself not so loud or exuberant; and try not to say anything insensitive or hurtful because you know exactly how bad your friends are feeling, and how badly they must be hurting. And because you know deep inside, that it could easily have been you. Comfort them, that's all we can do.

The photo shoot was extraordinarily boring. The line was supremely long and we constantly found ourselves at the back of the queue no matter how many times we tried to 'cut line'. I found the group photo shot a little funny (but silly); the photographer made us close our eyes, turn our heads to the left, wave our hands in the air...it's a good thing all of us were in the best of moods or he could easily have been the subject of much grumbling!

I'm going to sign off here for the time being..it's been an extraordinarily long post and I fear I've been rambling for far too long. Last note: I celebrated by eating a cheesy seafood rice dish that cost RM 20..double what I usually spend on lunch. Oh and I ate it alone. So take heed guys...I want a proper celebration okay! If not I'm not belanja-ing ANY of you :D

PS Congratulations to Frankie for equalling Jimmy Greave's record of 132 Chelsea goals. Now, 19 more to break the 150 mark.

Midweek BPL:-

Chelsea 3 Sunderland 1

Burnley 1 Man Utd 0 (hahaha)

Liverpool 4 Stoke 0

Tottenham 5 Hull 1

How la?

2009-08-20T03:24:00.002+10:00

Nevermind the bad English, I'm really stressed out here.

i. A-Levels called this evening (well technically yesterday) and asked me to collect my results at 10.00 am tomorrow and come for a photoshoot. Rumour (again I repeat, RUMOUR) has it that those *lucky* ones to be contacted are the straight A achievers.

ii. Some people didn't get the call.

iii. It's semi-formal. I'm in super deep sh*t because I have nothing to wear. No seriously.

iv. People keep on insisting I got straight As because of that nonsensical rumour.

v. And not to mention tantalising hints from Francis

vi. THE EFFING NEW RETAINER TASTES LIKE CHEMICALS/ PESTICIDE! AND THE BEST PART IS, THE TASTE WON'T GO AWAY. OH AND I CAN'T TALK, OR PRONOUNCE MY OWN NAME. HOW AM I GOING TO BE ABLE TO WORK????

Yea yea seriously stressed person here so everyone get out of the way. I promise I'll be better by noon tomorrow.

The Big Day...Tomorrow That Is

2009-08-19T16:47:00.001+10:00

I was just talking to Francis on MSN and he said that whatever happens tomorrow, he wants me to text him.

And remember Su-Wen, don't commit suicide if you get 599! :P

Not funny sir. But hey, great idea.

An Eventful Few Days?

2009-08-18T14:30:00.002+10:00

Friggin blogspot is acting up...can't post a picture of Didier celebrating his goals against Hull aargh.

Well I can't deny that things have certainly taken a more interesting turn this week...firstly, BPL season is back :)

After 2 restless months where all football fans have felt akin to something dearly beloved having been wrenched away from their souls, the long wait is over and we're celebrating the return of the world's most watched league. Yeah, it's been missed that badly. I actually wanted to stay at home and watch the match (first kick-off of the new season, Chelsea v Hull City!) but my dad forced us to go out to Imperial Garden at BSC because he had already booked 1/2 a smoked duck and he insisted that my mum and himself could not possibly finish it by themselves (Liar!). So I only managed to watch the first half. Hull took a shock lead thanks to Stephen Hunt, but Drogba equalised with a superb free-kick C-Ron would have been proud of. I didn't get to see the second half but this year, Malaysian football fans are thanking their lucky stars because Premier League Radio has come to town :). BFM 89.9 is hosting PL Radio for the very first time, bringing live coverage and commentary of matches, as well as half-time expert analysis, live score updates and post-match reactions. I plugged one earphone into my ear for the rest of the Chelsea match, and was delighted to hear it live that Drogba had scored a last-minute winner. When I began pumping my fists halfway through dinner, my mum asked my brother if I had gone mad..I think she hadn't noticed the earphone. It's a godsend, I don't feel so aggrieved now if I can't watch the match because I can still hear what's going on. (Reception's pretty bad in restaurants but beggars can't be choosers)

Oh but there's a downside to it. I was so engrossed listening to the match I didn't notice that my retainer was gone. Jahanam! I had put it into a cup for safekeeping, and the stupid Lebanese waiter took it away, retainer and all! T_T. I had to fork out RM 200 to get a new one..when I get it tonight my teeth are going to hurt like hell because I haven't been wearing a retainer for 3 days. My parents were pretty mad at first but when I told them it had a small hole and I was wishing that *something would happen* to it anyway, they laughed and said in legal terms, it's called contributory negligence. Not funny, hole or not I still have to get a new one since the manager couldn't find it in the trash. Go ahead Jia Ern, laugh. And may I remind you when are YOU getting your new one made? :P

Yesterday, went out to lunch with some of the others: Jia Ern, Brian, Li-Wei, Po and Annona. Annona had just came back from Melbourne (!) a week ago, and naturally Jia Ern and I were rather wary of ahem going near her for fear of contracting any lingering H1N1 flu virus...we actually went to Watsons at the main block and MV before going to meet them to buy masks (I know it's rude but still...) but predictably, they were out of stock. Po said that since she had already been back for a week, it should be fine and that since she hadn't exhibited any flu-like symptoms...the coast should be clear. I guess. Jia Ern met me at the main block at nearly twelve but before catching the bus, we went to the DSA to play the clavinova there for a little while. It was so stupid; finally we had a piano in front of us in an empty room but neither of us had brought any books! However, I taught her how to play 'Heart and Soul' so hopefully next time, we can play our little duet together. We met the guys at around 12.45 pm. However, since we (or rather she!) were on a tight budget (paycheques only on the first week of the month okay!)we had lunch at McDonalds. Haihz. I hadn't had a McD lunch on an outing since I was 11 haha.After Annona and Li-Wei came, we accompanied them to Kenny Rogers. After lunch, we went to visit Joo at Carlo Rino where she's working part-time and visited a few more shops before heading home early because Li-Wei's piano exam was the next day and naturally, she had to go home and practice until her wrists ached (joking, but yes Grade 8 exams are that bad). Not the most fun of outings I must admit since it was so short and Eu Jinn had to go back early to do his assignments...but it was still nice to see everyone again after a hiatus of 2 months.

And last but not least...the day of reckoning has finally arrived...albeit not for another 2 days thankfully. Fingers crossed for the World Award sigh.

Uno

2009-08-14T13:02:00.003+10:00

You know, uno, the loneliest number on this planet?

-From 3 Fates by Aimee Friedman, from the anthology 21 Proms

It's possible to walk into a room full of friends and still feel alone.

Community Shield Winners

2009-08-13T12:57:00.004+10:00

Scorers: Carvalho, Lampard (Chelsea), Nani, Rooney (United)

Chelsea win 4-1 on penalties :)

Finally, our first penalty shootout win in 7 attempts! One game, one trophy. United watch out haha.

Green

Values:-
Intellectual Achievements
Logic
Competency

Joys:-
Personal Achievement
Ideas
Meeting Challenges

Strengths:-
Confidence
Logical
Problem-solver

Needs:-
Autonomy
Truth & Facts
Accuracy

Frustrations:-
Unfairness
Incompentence
Nonsense Rules

At work you are conceptual and an independent thinker. For you, work is play. You are drawn to constant challenges in career, and like to develop models, explore ideas, or build systems to satisfy your need to deal wth the innovative. Once you have perfected an idea you prefer to move on leaving the project to be maintained and supported by others

In love you prefer to let your head rule your heart. You dislike repetition, so it is difficult for you to continuously express your feelings. You believe that once feelings are stated, they are obvious to a partner. You are uneasy when your emotions control you. You want to establish a relationship, leave it to maintain itself, and turn your energies back to your career.

In childhood you appeared to be older than your years and focused on your greatest interests, achiveing in subjects that were mentally stimulating. You were impatient with drill and routine, questioned authority, and found it necessary to respect teachers before you could learn from them.

What If

2009-08-11T17:36:00.003+10:00

Met up with Grace yesterday for a long awaited catch-up session :) I swear that girl hasn't changed a bit (except for maturing in terms of thinking and self-belief, but that's a good thing) since I last saw her 2 years ago. England really does agree with her I think! We had lunch at Italiannies (ergh that meatball *sandwich* is totally foul) and watched Ghost of Girlfriends Past. I didn't even realise it was rated 18 until later! If I had known it was that easy to get in, I would have gone in much earlier! But after that horrible Euphoria incident I think I have an age-phobia. After the movie, we had sinfully delicious desserts at Delicious (excuse the pun!). Apple pie with ice-cream for me, and a choco brownie topped off with ice-cream for her. Somebody shoot me, I think the ice-cream must have befuddled my brains or something because somehow that horrible girl got me to divulge secrets and gossip no man should ever find out. Next time it's your turn Grace!

..................................................................................................

What if I'd asked you
Would you have answered?
What if I'd had the courage to say
What I really felt inside?

Damn you again Grace! All that *confession* time to you has got me guilty again! :)

Behind Time!

2009-08-03T00:10:00.004+10:00

Gosh has it already been 2 weeks since the last post? Zut alors, so sorry about that. Time flies when you're having fun...or not.

So as an update...I got the job at Peony's Music. Can't say it's my dream job but it's better than nothing. I'm actually quite afraid of it to be honest. I'm totally blur when it comes to the cash till and all those admin and paperwork stuff; and all those accessories for guitars and drums etc. And my colleague, Crystal isn't exactly sweetness and light. Her comments have seriously driven me up the wall but I'm not going to air my dirty laundry in public by treating you to some of the bitchy stuff she's said. Just because she's 27 doesn't give you the right to boss teenagers around. It's actually dead boring on Tuesdays and Wednesdays because there aren't many customers or classes. So all I do is bring my TIME magazines to read and re-read all my fantasy books. The work only starts to pile up when Peony drops around. Thank God that's not too often. There seem to be millions of things to be done and be briefed upon whenever she's around.

Thank God my other co-worker, Ben was around to keep me sane. It was really nice to have someone to talk to and diss Crystal! It's too bad Friday was his last day (I was actually hired to replace him!), I'm seriously going to miss him. And his never-ending patience when teaching me how to work the IRS system.

I'm starting Mandarin conversational classes at that stupid Silk Road at Centrepoint. I swore never to go there when I was younger but well. Life has other ideas apparently.

2 more weeks until the new season starts! Aug 15 will mark the beginning of the BPL 2009/2010 Season :) Until then, Community Shield Man Utd v Chelsea Aug 9 to look forward to.

Oh yea had dinner with Fei Ni and Lucinda at Wong Kok Char Chan Teng after work on Friday. I also saw Debra and her bf, and Mun Yew from my window that afternoon! The silly people ate sandwiches. Yes, sandwiches. Who eats sandwiches at Wong Kok?! I had fried rice, which was really nice actually. I think Fei Ni wanted to thank me for rewriting her entire Econs assignment for uni! Had a great time just talking...makes me realise how much I really miss my college mates.

Flat

2009-07-21T18:47:00.006+10:00

Somebody was stretchered off

The 2 teams line-up before kick-off

Yea so I went to watch the Devils at Bukit Jalil Stadium yesterday. The stadium was only half-full, as most of the die-hard United fans had already got their fill of action on Saturday. My dad said that Saturday were all the United fans, while today was the rest of the Premier League haha. But there could have been some merit in that statement; because I saw loads of other jerseys besides AIG ones; I saw a 'Fabregas 4', Chelsea jerseys, England jerseys, I think maybe even a Real Madrid one!

The stadium was really hot, and I regretted not bringing a tie-grip. The players were already warming up on the pitch, but most pairs of eyes seemed to be focussed on the red shirts. I took some pictures to pass the time and finally, the commentator announced the names of the players while the big screen showed the line-ups and formations. SAF had gone with a weaker squad than the one on Saturday; but one that still included Owen, Giggs and Carrick. Foster started in goal (pleasant surprise; after that howler on Sat I expected Tomasz (sp?) to start).

At half-time, United were 2 goals to the good; thanks to lax defending from the hosts and killer finishing from Macheda and Owen. However, I couldn't really concentrate on the match (no) thanks to the idiots puffing away all around me. Luckily I had my bro's Man Utd scarf to hide my nose in whenever the stink got too bad. The second-half was draggy with the toothless Malaysian attack bringing many angry groans from the audience; as the young Malaysian players needlessly surrendered possession countless times. It was sooo boring. Even the stadium was half-asleep. United seemed to take their foot off the gas and merely ran circles round the host team for a long time. There were a few attempts at goal, but nothing too threatening (or interesting). By far, the loudest cheer of the night was for the introduction of Rooney with 20 minutes to go. He at least tried to inject some energy and pace into a match that was sorely devoid of much entertainment.

We left with about 10 minutes to go in order to avoid any massive traffic jams. My dad was absolutely right: It's way better on TV. There's Martin Tyler's commentary, flashbacks and close-ups. It's so difficult trying to get a good look at what the players are actually doing from so far away! But still, going to your first football match is always an experience. But the next one better be at Stamford Bridge....

Treason???

2009-07-19T22:00:00.002+10:00

Frank forgive me. I'm commiting the ultimate sin a Chelsea fan can do: I'm going to the Man Utd match tomorrow. Well, my dad forced me to (my bro, for some strange reason tried to bribe me not to go by giving me the Chelsea scarf he bought 2 years ago) so I couldn't say no. And then I had to give back the scarf ish haha.

I watched some of the match on Saturday on TV. I mean hey, it's not everyday a Premier League team (let alone EPL champions) come to town. And I missed the Chelsea match last year... :(. And from what I saw, our young Malaysian stars did themselves justice. The first goal, a 30-yard volley that made VDS look stupid; was sensational. It was very much like the goal Paul Scholes scored against Barcain last year's CL semis. The second goal...was a mistake by Ben. 2-2 at 83 minutes, then Michael Owen goes and spoils the party. But no sweat, this are the reigning PL champions and even the commentator heaped praise on the home team.

The only thing I'm worried about is how on earth I'm going to stomach 2 hours of the entire stadium singing "Glory glory Man United..."...ahhhh....

I've been working the whole week at my dad's office, doing a very boring task: recording cash voucher transactions in their respective files. A real snoozefest, and there's like hundreds more waiting for me. I've been working for 4 days, and 2008's vouchers are still not done. And there's 2007 vouchers to look forward to. But then maybe it's my fault for not going to work earlier everyday.

Nothing interesting this week except that:-

i. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is out! Anyone want to watch with me? :)
ii. I drove to town with my dad on Monday (so scary!)
iii. I drove alone on Wednesday! It was just to the club but still...I found it way more relaxing than having someone next to me, screaming their head off if I happen to step on the accelerator a teensy bit too hard. Oh and the honks seem to have dried up thank God.
iv. I went for my job interview with Peony's Music! Peony, the owner said she couldn't offer me the teaching job since I would be going off next year but offered me the part-time assistant school head job. Pray pray I get it...

That reminds me I need to call Pooh...she's flying to the UK on Tuesday lucky pig.

Fortnight review

2009-07-12T20:05:00.004+10:00

Ever since I've been writing in the green book of jottings I'm really lazy to update my blog now. But guess what...the green book is LOST (!) and I'm trying to see if my brother (or heaven forbid, my MOTHER) has hidden it and is READING it. So until it is found, I'll have to write down here for now.

Basically, I've been turning to mush for 2 weeks; part of fulfilling the promise I made to myself during the recent exams that I would let my brain hibernate for exactly a month before seeking employment. And cheers, I've just seen that Peony's Music at Centrepoint is looking for part-time music teachers!!! My fellow Diploma counterpart is working there as well, so if he can get the job (using Grade 8) I don't see why I can't with my Diploma. I hope. I just need to collect the cert. It's finally arrived. But it sure beats serving greasy burgers at McD.

Oh, and yea cheers to FedEx for making history by winning a 6th Wimbledon and becoming the first man in tennis history to win 15 Grand Slams. I was so afraid he was going to lose...my friend, Dani Turner in the UK and I were watching the match *together*..and she was supporting Roddick. Agonising! I knew Roddick was playing superbly, but I had no idea that he would take Federer that far! The match was a see-saw affair, with both players evenly matched. In the 5th set, we were both afraid that it would go on until 20 plus points each...which would take God knows how long. It was already approaching nearly 4 hours. My butt was like numb from being glued to the computer screen. And it didn't help that the stupid online channel kept on being disconnected at crucial moments. I watched until 1.30 am when it was 13 all. Aaargh. My mum made me off the computer, but I crept downstairs and on-ned the TV. Damn! It was over already. I saw Roddick sitting down with what looked like a glum expression...omg...could it be...? Yes! It was! As I saw FedEx strolling out waving his hands towards the crowd, I sighed with relief. Phew. Can't wait to tease Dani about it haha. But tennis will never beat BPL. And we're both really anxious for the new season to start in a month's time! :)

I haven't been out much...the downside of NO CAR. Not that I'm a fantastic driver (yet!) anyway. But I'm learning. I drove for 4 hours today, and I'm getting better. I only got 2 soft honks today haha.

Last Tuesday I went to Tropicana City with Pooh and Ariff...watched Night at the Museum 2 while Carynn watched Hannah Montana. I was still recovering from sore throat so I had to close my eyes while they devoured their Singapore Fried Mee Hoon and Curry Laksa. Meanies haha.

And yesterday was Jebat's farewell BBQ. I won't go on about how *flip-flop* I was about the whole affair. I think I must have changed my mind at least a dozen times. Almost all the girls had pulled out...so I must admit I wasn't very keen on going. And my parents were going out on Saturday night...so they wouldn't be able to take me back. But as I was at the MPPJ library at 4.45 pm on the day of the thing, Fei Ni called and pleaded (okay, that doesn't sound right. Fei Ni doesn't plead) for me to go, saying that she didn't want to go alone. Sure dear, if you can fetch me that is. No problemo she says. So in the end only Jia Ern owes Brian a free seaweed meal. (A/N: Brian if you're reading this, again I want to reiterate that we were so worried we were dissapointing you we hatched up the idea of belanja-ing you to make up for it. Please don't do it again, silence is the worst form of punishment!) The stupid part now that I think about it is that they could easily have taken me there and back in the end. Reason? Fei Ni picked me up after they left and we returned home later than them. 12.00 am. The latest I've ever been out. I don't have a curfew because this is the girl who always returns home before dark. Well, before this year haha. At 11.45 pm, my mum started calling with the whole safety lecture but I hung up; because she could lecture me at home: it's cheaper that way. And we were both already in the car anyway.

But I'm going too fast. Let me start at the beginning. Fei Ni had some surprise party thingy before the BBQ so she agreed to come at 8 pm. However, at 7.50 pm, she called saying that the birthday boy hadn't arrived, so she could only come at 8.30 pm. Fair enough. But I messaged her jokingly saying that if she came any later we might as well forget the BBQ and catch a late night movie! No hurry anyway. I wasn't even ready at 8 pm, my bro and I had been practising tennis service until past 7 so we came back quite late. At 8.45 pm, my parents went out with my father sniggering that if I didn't have enough to eat, they would ta pau something from the restaurant. *snort* The food wouldn't finish that fast!

I played Michael Buble's 'It's Time' album on piano until 9.15 pm when she finally arrived. She apologized, saying that the birthday boy was late because he had been playing badminton. (!!!!). Well, we were the last ones when we arrived there. I must admit, I got kind of a shock when I saw the small gathering. I knew that only like 10 guests were going to be there, but still...It was so akward to be with Jebat and Pik Yen's circle of friends without any of Joo, Jia Ern etc being there. Like I felt so lost. Eventhough they're my classmates, they're the ones I mix the least with. And I'm so sorry to admit that eventhough I have known Jebat for like 6 or 7 years, I was never that close to him; not even when we were in Prefects or LEO together. Heck, I even went to his house to interview his family for the school magazine in Form 5! But still...

Besides the two of us, there was Pik Yen, Jebat (obviously), Hock Soon, JJ, Ka Heng, Brian, Debbie, Joel, Zwee Ho, Tash and someone else I think...Debra couldn't come because she was sick. Omg!!! As Jebat nicely put it, "WTF!".

There was a guy we didn't know (we being Fei Ni and me) at one of the grills. Fei Ni being Fei Ni, walked right up to him and stuck out her hand. "Hi, I'm Fei Ni." He looked up and smiled. "Oh hi, I'm Chee Yong." Wait a second, could it possibly be...? "Where are you from?" "Segi College." O.M.G. I just couldn't help myself. "Erm, your name sounds very familiar...do you know Carynn?" Yes, I know, shoot me!!! Luckily, he didn't take offense or anything and just said he did. Fei Ni and I poked and nudged each other. Pooh would die if she knew he was here! We resisted the temptation of calling her and blurting out the news immediately. That would be really crude and obvious.

We wondered how he fitted in the picture but it turned out that Hock Soon had brought him. O..K. Since when was he friends with Jebat anyway? But that was none of our business. Instead, we just busied ourself chewing lamb bones and trying to toast (in vain!) marshmallows. They didn't go brown, just slightly warm. There was nothing much of note except Jebat getting really tipsy (eventhough I asked him how much he drank and it turns out we drank about the same amount) and jumping around and being more animated than I'd ever seen him in 7 years. That's putting it mildly haha. And another thing of note is that whiskey and Mirinda doesn't go well AT ALL. It tastes loads better with Coke. And no, I didn't get all smiley (!) like during the Kuantan trip. When counting the bill later, my mental arithmetic was fine. Apparently news of my supposed drunken state during the trip has spread, with Pik Yen and Debbie saying that they had heard about it. WHAT?! I wasn't drunk. I could still walk in a straight line and count. I was just slightly stupid-er than normal.

The party broke up at about 11.30 pm, with Fei Ni and I staying behind to help Brian and Tash clean up the place until about midnight. Jebat was pleading with the others not to make him finish up the rest of the booze, because his parents would kill him. I think the dad would! I remember I was so scared of him during the interview. He's in NUS now to do his Bachelor of Music. I'm sure he can do it. He's the first one of us to be leaving, and eventhough many of us are not very close to him; I'm sure we'll agree that we'll all be missing a good friend and classmate.

After I got home, I called Pooh eventhough it was 1 am, bursting to tell her who we had met there. And the best part: She said she already knew the day before! What a spoiler! It would have been so fun to hear her scream OMG or something like that.

PS The govt reversed one of the only smart decisions they ever made: By reversing PPSMI and teaching Science and Maths in BM again. Hello? People, WAKE UP. The whole world is learning it in English. English is like the knowledge language, even in Korea, Hong Kong, Japan etc they're all learning it in English. What? The rural people are falling behind? Excuse me, you're doing them a disservice! By forcing them to learn in English, it's forcing them to master the language. In the long run, this will be to their detriment because their English language mastery will forever be poor as a result of insufficent exposure to English. They can talk until the cows come home about putting more emphasis on English lessons, introducing Literature components etc but even I have been born long enough to know this won't work. The standard of English in Malaysia is already so poor, we should be rectifying it not worsening the problem. And that probably will just further hamper our future graduates' employability prospects as many employers already complain that their joblessness is due to their poor command of the language. And think of all the taxpayers' money wasted on laptops and CDs and textbooks; everything has to be reconverted. Needless to say, Dr. M is not happy about it. But that's not surprising, seeing as he was the one who implemented it. Many parents and teachers have written into the newspapers before and after the decision was made, but their pleas seem to have fallen into deaf ears. I forsee one issue which is going to crop up again will be the reintroduction of English-medium schools, as an alternative for parents who still want their children to learn the subjects in English. As a results of the new policy, the only solution would be to send the children to international schools. Unfortunately, this option is out of reach for most of the population due to exorbitant costs so latter would be an alternative which I can see gaining momentum.

My mother, needless to say is making a lot of noise (at home that is haha) because my brother will be affected in Form 4. Being the first batch to do Science and Maths in English since Standard 1, to suddenly switch to BM for the 3 sciences and 2 maths subjects would be equivalent to torture. For God's sake at least let the Form 4s continue in English and stop using them as guinea pigs! Imagine,instead of elements, compounds and mixtures for Chem it will be unsur, sebatian dan campuran. Sweet.

Wong completed the quiz "Which color best suits your personality?" with the result You are Green! .

You are Green! You are a cool yet energized person. You probably tend to be a little more introverted than extroverted - while you love being with your friends, you still need your "you" time. You are probably a rather laid back, zen sort of person, unless you get a good kick of energy; then you can be crazy fun! You are probably insightful and smart; logic comes easily to you. You tend to be a balance between red and yellow. Reds are passionate and intense, and tend to walk over people. Yellows tend to be the walked on, because they like to keep the peace. You, however, are a balance of both. You know when to lie down and let someone take the lead, but if you feel strongly about something, you're not afraid to stand up for it! You are probably compassionate as well, and like animals and plants. You may be a little off-beat, and feel like not many people really see the depth in your personality. You would probably rather keep things on a superficial level that other people can understand than show the deeper side of yourself. You, in a nutshell: Cool, energized, balanced, strong, funky, zen, deep, intelligent, logical, compassionate. GREEN! .

Lazy Day :)

2009-07-01T01:29:00.002+10:00

Nothing much to mention...Part II isn't up yet because I'm still suffering from writer's block after the 20+ page mini-novella I wrote in the green book..I need some time to summarise it.
So yea. Did nothing of note today except watching Andy Murray's 4 hour win over Stanislas Warwrinka (go Murray :p) and have finally started my glass-art project. Too bad I only did one side.

October

2009-06-28T02:26:00.002+10:00

October:-

Loves to chat
Loves those who loves him
Loves to takes things at the centre
Attractive and suave
Inner and physical beauty
Does not lie or pretend
Sympathetic
Treats friends importantly
Always making friends
Easily hurt but recovers easily
Bad tempered
Selfish
Seldom helps unless asked
Daydreamer
Very opinionated
Does not care of what others think
Emotional
Decisive
Strong clairvoyance
Loves to travel, the arts and literature
Soft-spoken, loving and caring
Romantic
Touchy and easily jealous
Spendthrift and easily influenced
Easily lose confidence

Everything except the spendthrift and easily influenced line. I'm a kiamsiap bugger by nature and am actually very decisive when making up my mind. And the bad-tempered part.

(Prom) Nightmare on Elm Street Part I

2009-06-26T22:58:00.010+10:00

Okay okay so maybe I'm exaggerating (sp?). It wasn't THAT bad. But I thought my high school prom was marginally better than this one.

Top 6 Reasons Why Prom Sucks:-

6. THE FOOD.
-I don't know if it's just a coincidence but the 2 proms I've been to? Let's just say the culinary skills of those 5 star hotel master chefs are in serious doubt. I'm starving.

5. THE MUSIC
-Please cut out the those screeching American Idol and Rockstar INXS wannabes and actually get in people who can sing. And warning: If you're not Celine Dion, please do not attempt to sing her songs. I don't bring earplugs to formal events.

4. HEELS
-My feet are hurting like crazy. I know we women have to suffer to look good, but can you name me a more cruel invention than 2 inch heels worn for 6 consecutive hours??

3. EXPENSES
-A girl can thank her lucky stars if she can fit her ticket, dress, make-up, hair, shoes, bag and accesories et al under RM 300 (yours truly managed to). But honestly, prom is just an expensive excuse to get glammed up. Unless that is, you manage to get a guy to take you and foot the ticket bill.

2. SAYING GOODBYE
-You know at the end where they start playing those graduation and weepy sob-sob songs? Yea, those kind of moments. Where the hankies start to come out. Since the prom's normally at the end of high school or college, it's always difficult saying goodbye to those people who've you've grown to trust, like and maybe even love.

1. FEELING STUPID
-I really don't want to say this, but proms are really akward for us swinging singles. Or maybe that's how it seemed to me. I know that all those Seventeen magazines are always stressing about the "fun" and "benefits" of going solo to the prom but let's be a little realistic shall we? The prom is traditionally a romantic, couple-y event. Who are you going to dance with when they start playing those slow romantic numbers and the DJ's hollering to all the couples in the house to step right up on the dancefloor? Look next to you. Whoops! It's your best friend, not some cute guy. So sorry. Just sit down and eat your banana crumble, and slowly wait while the seconds tick by. And soak in the couple love.

.................................................................................

Wong Su-Wen is normally not such a bitchy cynic and actually quite likes the glitz and glamour of a prom. She just isn't in a good mood when she's starving and sporting sore feet, and drafting this post under a nightlight in the dead of the night.

-Excerpted from the green book of jottings, 25th June 2009, 4.00 am

Well, that was quite a few hours ago; my feet have stopped hurting, I've recovered from th embarassment of it all and I've had a decent night's sleep. So I'm going to offer a rebuttal to the list above.

Top 6 Reasons Why Proms Rock:-

6. SHOPPING

-Girls, do we really need another excuse to splurge on some ridiculously expensive dress that makes you look good? Bring on the proms people.

5. CAMWHORING (sp?)

-Again, the prom provides a perfect excuse to flash those pearly-whites at the camera lens at every available minute and hone those model poses. Need I say more? :)

4. LIVING THE DREAM

-Maybe this sounds a little lame, but you actually get to walk down a red carpet. And maybe, you'll just get to dance with the guy of your dreams. (A/N: No, don't look at me; not this year!)

3. SPYING

-Okay maybe spying's the wrong word, but it's really fun to see all your mates dressed to impress. Who knew the guys could actually scrub up so well? XD

2. DANCING

-Shake that booty people. It's a fight to the finish to be the last one standing on the dance-floor.

1. CAMAREDERIE

-And what better place to further bond and have fun with your mates than at the prom? Where would we be without our friends; who help us criticize the bad food, bad music and groan loudly when the Director of A-Levels gets up to make a speech? :)

PS RIP to the King of Pop, Michael Jackson who tragically died from a heart attack at 5.21 am this morning. The memory of a man who changed and revolutionised the pop music landscape will forever live on in songs like Black & White, Thriller, Beat It etc. He won't be forgotten.

PPS To Brian Yong, Jo Eve and Ka Heng who are heading back to their respective home states, travel safely guys. It's been a hell of a lot of fun knowing you, and I'll never forget you. Thanks for making college one of the most fun times of my life, and see you guys in August :)

Hallejujah!

2009-06-21T19:47:00.002+10:00

Yes, A-Levels are done and dusted woohoo! Don't get me wrong, I've loved college but I seriously need a break from a decade of non-stop studying. Not really in the mood to type, so just a quick recap.

Thursday: Chem 6B WAS HORRIBLE! I forgot what was the bond angle for a digonal H20 molecule :(...there were lots more horrible things that I forgot but since it's Sunday the memory is kind of hazy...

Friday: Serious shopping with Fei Ni. Luckily, she found this gorgeous red dress with frills at the hem at Eye Candy, Atria so I didn't have to endure much dress-shopping! The rest of the day was spent mucking around at the Curve, where I discovered the joy of Swedish Meatballs. Mmm that heavenly sauce and jam...

Saturday: Yes, I went to the Curve AGAIN (this time with Mummy) and BOUGHT A NEW DRESS! :) It's green, and looks a ton better than the old one.

Also celebrated Father's Day at Modesto's Pizza where my entire family ingested 3 pizzas, 3 pastas, a Rib Eye and a tiramisu. Gluttons XD (especially since it burned quite a hole in my bro's and mine's pockets!). Thank God he paid for the two Kilkenny's he drank.

Sunday: My father celebrated Father's Day by bringing me driving, where yours truly got honked a gazillion times, drove with the handbrake on for 15 minutes and zero gas, nearly banged a dozen cars and got the gear stuck outside Secret Recipe at Centrepoint. What a day.

Of Tear Gas and Tears

2009-06-16T16:44:00.005+10:00

Dear blog/diary (maybe it's time I gave you a name huh),

Quite a little bit of drama happened yesterday. It didn't make the headlines (no, Datuk Nizar's "BUBAR DUN" songkok had that honour), but it still managed to cause quite a bit of sensation among us nervous wrecks about to sit for C4. From a distance, the only indication of anything out of the ordinary was the humongous traffic jam leading to Jalan Dungun and Jalan Semantan, but then again, maybe a car just stalled. The drama only started when people suddenly started running out of the level 6 toilet, clutching their noses and throats, mouthing the word "Smoke". Smoke? There's no smoke without fire! And then Eu Jinn says that there's a fire down at the Ground Floor Mamak place, complete with billowing smoke and fiery blazes. Oh dear. But then, I remembered that when I was at G a few minutes ago, I didn't see anything or smell anything odd. But then, the door was closed.

Heeding the call of their bladders, Eu Jinn and Fei Ni decided to take their chances. Later, they came rushing out, Fei Ni saying that the smoke smell was so strong that her eyes began tearing and she began coughing. Lucky she didn't suffer from asphyxiation or something before the exam. Poor dear was so shaken, I had to let her breathe in my jacket smell to clear her head a little, since the *smell* was leaking into the whole corridor. Pretty soon, everyone's eyes began tearing and my nose began to get a little well, funny. Finally, Tash told us that it was actually the Iraqian protesters outside the UN Office, and that the police had actually thrown tear gas grenades at them, as the crowd refused to disperse peacefully and instead were trying to stage a sit-in. What? You think this is Thailand? Not if the police can help it. What we must have caught were whiffs of the gas, which were minimal since we were up at level 6 and pretty far away from the UN office. It was pretty cool though, I thought tear gas only existed in like movies or something. After the exam, I tried to drag Fei Ni towards the UN office to see if there was anything interesting left, but her dad came before we managed to reach there. Still, there were banners and papers saying stuff like "Where's My Vote?" and "Ahmad (whatever his name is) is not my president" lying around the road.

But you know what? After that C4 paper, nobody needed any tear gas to shed tears. Integration and vectors friggin SUCK.

Bummer.

PS Happy belated birthday to Pooh :)

PPS This is way late, but congrats to Roger Federer for completing a career Grand Slam by winning Roland Garros last week, and equalling Pete Sampras's record of 14 majors. Go FedEx :) Wimbledon is next! Oh God. There's no football anymore except the Confed Cup (who cares much) so I've turned to tennis sigh. Next season can't start soon enough.

UPDATE: Conditional offers received from University of Melbourne, Sydney and Monash.

Believable?

2009-06-12T21:05:00.003+10:00

1. Our dear DPM doesn't know that a pass in English is not mandatory to get the SPM certificate
2. H1N1 is officially a pandemic
3. Kaka moved to Real for 60 something million euros
4. Man Utd finally decided to cash in on Ronaldo to Real for 80 million pounds
5. Adam Lambert is gay
6. I may or may not fail Unit 5 and 6 Econs

And the best part is, THEY'RE ALL TRUE.

FA Cup Winners 2009

2009-05-31T16:19:00.007+10:00

And yes, the Blues have won the FA Cup for the 5th time, beating Everton 2-1 at Wembley last night and winning their first trophy in 2 years.

After the shock of falling behind after only 26 seconds (a new record) thanks to a great Louis Saha goal, Chelsea recovered to dominate the match and send of Guus Hiddink in style with the the perfect farewell gift. Drogba rose unmarked to head past Tim Howard and equalise at 20', before Frank whipped in a powerful left-footed shot 20m past a despairing Tim Howard at 72'. Beautiful goal. Dancing round the corner flag as a tribute to Frank Sr's winning goal for West Ham all those years ago, his team-mates mobbed him in celebration of what possibly could be the winning goal.

It was. Minutes later, Florent Malouda unleashed another fierce 30m drive that looked to have bounced under the crossbar before bouncing out again and caught by Howard. TV replays showed it to have crossed the line, but luckily it didn't matter. A perfect way to end the season on a high, and just reward for a fantastic season for Frank.

BLUE IS THE COLOUR ~

PS Stats II tomorrow. Pray pray pray that it's do-able. And oh yea, I think I may have gone a little overboard with the pics. It's only the FA Cup, after all.

Kings of Europe

2009-05-28T20:12:00.004+10:00

Congrats to Barca for winning the UEFA Champions League last night and becoming the first Spanish club to win the treble. After a rocky 10 minutes dominated by United, Barca turned on the style to demolish United 2-0 with goals from Eto'o and Messi in one of the most lop-sided finales in modern history. It just wasn't United's day and with SAF making some tactical boo-boos and their star players choosing inconveniently to have an off-day, Barca ran circles round the Devils with their mesmerizing passing. Xavi and Iniesta were brilliant, showing off their superb array of passes and making United look like Stoke City. A deserved victory that could have easily been 3 or 4-0. Too bad for United, so much for the quintuple.

End-of-the-Season Blues

2009-05-26T21:20:00.005+10:00

Sorry it's been a long time since the last post..I actually need to start working a little bit harder than normal here.

But first up, let me introduce you to this year's American Idol..and no, it's not Adam Lambert.

*drum roll please...* And the winner of American Idol Season 9 is....

Kris Allen! Yes, Kris upsetted the odds to snatch victory from heavy favourite Adam Lambert in what has been a gripping and highly entertaining season of American Idol. Rocker Lambert was everyone's best bet to take the coveted crown but at the end of the day, the underdog triumphed to seal a memorable stint on the hit reality show. Well done Kris!

Yea, couldn't resist another picture haha. He's cute isn't he..but I haven't totally forgiven him for taking what was rightfully Danny Gokey's place in the final. All the same, Kris served up a pretty decent show in the finale, singing Marvin Gaye's "Ain't No Sunshine"...umm my favourite, One Republic's "Apologize" and Kara DioGuardi's "No Boundaries". It was neck and neck between him and Adam, but Kris just edged it for me in the third song. I didn't even know that Adam was singing (or screaming) an inspirational song.

Fast forward to the finale on Thursday.

O.M.G. I was totally blown away. I watched it twice, TWICE! I loved every single minute of it, except for some unfortunate blips (like the Top 13 performance of Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours"; they totally butchered it again! and Megan's horrendous duet with Michael Sarver while Steve Martin played banjo. Cacophonous warbling they called it. I'm surprised she even got as far as the Top 13). I loved everything else in between: Lil Rounds and Queen Latifah's duet on "Cue the Rain", Kris and Keith Urban's country-pop "I Wanna Kiss A Girl", Black-Eyed Peas singing "Boom Boom Pow", Fergie and the girls singing "Glamorous", Alison Iraheta and Cyndi Lauper on "Time After Time", The Top 13 with Carlos Santana (I loved "Smooth!"), the guys singing Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" and Danny Gokey with Lionel Richie! I swear, I almost melted into a puddle when he sang "Hello".

But seriously, the night (at least before the results) belonged to Adam. Performing with KISS, he blew the audience away with his fantastic vocals and outrageous costume (platform boots!). And he didn't look out of place, because KISS looked like overgrown silver bats with too-long tongues. But they rocked. And the pyrotechnics rocked too haha. But the piece de resistance was when Kris and Adam dueted on the Queen song, "We Are the Champions" just before the results were announced. Again, Adam shone. He could have been Freddie Mercury's double. Honestly. And Kris...well, he's obviously not a rocker but he provided nice back-up vocals hehe.

And then we all know what happened after that. But it doesn't matter who wins it. It's about life after American Idol. Because people like Jennifer Hudson and Chris Daughtry have proved you don't need to win it to make it. It's about whether you have the mainstream appeal to make that transitional step to the real world.

Talking about mainstream appeal...perhaps it wasn't too surprising that Kris won. After all, after Danny was voted out, it was kinda obvious his fans were going to turn to Kris as the next best option. Let's face it, Adam is a fabulous singer but Kris has got more mainstream commercial appeal, with his boy-next-door cute looks and more pop-friendly voice. And a great knack of giving old songs a more relevant and modern twist, but at the same time maintaining his signature style and sound. Adam won't be too dissapointed. He's already got that recording contract and a brand new Ford Hybrid.

And on to the next set of congratulations...

Frank with manager Guus Hiddink at the Chelsea awards

Congratulations to Frank, who has the won the Chelsea's Player of the Year award an unprecendented third time, making him the first Chelsea player in the club's history to ever win the award three times. Well done, though it's small consolation for not making it into the PFA and FWA shortlist as well as BPL team of the year. But clearly, Chelsea fans recognise that Frank has been the club's most outstanding performer. Memorable moments include that last minute strike against Stoke at the Bridge to snatch victory at the death, his 2 goals against Liverpool in the UCL that killed off hopes of a Liverpool fightback and his chip against Hull that was billed to be a contender for Goal of the Season. Notching double-figures in the goal-scoring charts for another straight season, Frank's proved he can mix it with the best in Europe. In fact, Frank has had the most shots on target in the PL this season (57), joint-top assists with RVP (10) and was one of only 3 others to reach 100 Premier League goals this season.

And hearty congrats to Nicolas Anelka as well, who picked up the Golden Boot award with a fantastic strike against Sunderland on Sunday to open the scoring for Chelsea. It's about time the Golden Boot returned to Stamford Bridge, after Ronaldo won it last year. Anelka only managed to pip Ronaldo on the last day because SAF decided to rest him for the CL final tomorrow. Bet he's throwing a real old sulky now haha.

And of course, condolences to West Brom, Boro and shockingly, Newcastle who were all relegated to the Coco-Cola Championship. I still can't believe the Magpies are relegated, they've been such an ever-present side in the BPL. For 16 years in fact. Even before the BPL was formed.

Final Day results:-

Chelsea 3 Sunderland 2 (Chelsea finish third, and earn automatic qualification to the group stages of next year's Champions League)

Man Utd 1 Hull 0

Arsenal 4 Stoke 1 ( 2 fantastic goals by RVP)

Liverpool 3 Spurs 1

Everton 2 Fulham 0 (Congrats to Fulham as well, highest ever finish in 130 years and Europa League spot)

West Ham 2 Boro 1

West Brom 0 Rovers 0

Villa 1 Newcastle 0

Untitled As Yet

2009-05-20T17:34:00.001+10:00

I need a name. And opinions. The ending went a bit funny because I lost my fingering but didn't want to stop.

AI FINALE TODAY!!!!

Chem 6A tomorrow boo.

Done :DDDD

2009-05-17T02:10:00.003+10:00

Cheers!!! I finally finished READING Econs 5A! So happy. At least I've done one round before the exam. Am reading Unit 6 now..Chem practical on Thursday. At least Unit 6A will be a paper I'm looking to score hopefully full marks...seeing as my Chem Unit 5 is potentially a disaster, judging on Unit 4! But titration is potentially tricky...KMnO4...I never can see the meniscus.

Oh, and congratulations to all Devils fans for clinching their record-equalling 18th League title, and their 3rd consecutive one. It broke my heart to watch the after-celebrations after the Arsenal game, but one (sigh) must be gracious. :P

Chelsea will probably finish in 3rd place this year but it's okay. FA Cup final to look foward to.

Examples of protectionism are tariffs, quotas, subsidies, Voluntary Export Restraints Agreements, regulatory barriers and embargoes. Hate hate hate Econs.

Mixed

2009-05-15T17:08:00.001+10:00

Good: -
Chelsea 4 Arsenal 1. Arsenal's biggest loss at Highbury since 1970, Chelsea's biggest win since God knows when. Enough said.

Bad:-

DANNY GOKEY OUT OF AMERICAN IDOL FINALE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm still in shock.

Outrage!

2009-05-10T00:48:00.002+10:00

Disgrace! Chelsea get dumped out of the UCL after horrifyingly, 4 or 5 penalty claims were turned down by that absurd referee! Essien gives us the perfect start after 9', but Iniesta breaks Chelsea hearts all round the world by scoring that crucial away goal at 90+4. After being the better team for 93 minutes, fate deals us a cruel card and we're out (no) thanks to that away goal rule.

Stupid referee. I don't blame Drogba for calling him an effing disgrace to the camera, or for Frank and Ballack remonstrating him after the game. He deserved it. That's how badly he screwed up, wrecking our entire European season. I don't care what UEFA says about no conspiracy theories. I'm quite sure the referee must have been under pressure from Platini not to let 2 English teams contest the final in Rome, and the exact same competitors as last year to boot. Yes Barcelona are a fantastic team, best team in the world and all that crap, but this is daylight robbery. Perhaps it looks better on the posters when the 2 so-called best teams in Europe contest in the dream finale.

It's utterly cruel, especially when we were a whisker away from a chance at redemption for last year's finals.

The only thing we have to look forward to is the FA Cup final against Everton late this month. We so better win it, because I don't think I can stomach another trophyless near-misses season.

I'm still seething so I'm in no mood to post up any pictures of the final day of college. Maybe tomorrow.

BPL:-

Man Utd v Man City
Arsenal v Chelsea
Liverpool v West Ham
Bolton v Sunderland
Tottenham v Everton

Going Mad?

2009-05-01T17:09:00.005+10:00

Oh Mr. Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun, please shine down on me...Because I'M DYING HERE STUCK IN MY ROOM, STUDYING REACTION MECHANISMS! AAARGHHH.

I'm obviously going crazy...until the point where I'm quoting nursery rhymes on my blog.

And the nightmare is only beginning...Mr. Francis just announced his little costing test is on Wednesday (!) and we have classes all the way until the 5th. WTF.

And I haven't even mentioned when's the REAL 3 hour paper.

But enough of that.

Yesterday's Stats mock was an indication of how much practice and work is still needed before the real deal. I did the paper hurriedly, a little too nervously and ended up crossing half the thing out because I didn't finish reading the question properly. And I forgot what is positive and negative skewness. Q3-Q2> Q2-Q1 is what? +ve or -ve? Damn it. And Jia Ern, I obviously don't have common sense. I have a bad memory.

So to escape from the horror of that, we decided to go for a little joy-ride to MV's Dragon-I...to eat the RM 1 chicken! It was the first time I was taking public transport and I was pleased to note that the buses were actually quite comfortable, not the ramshackle broken-down contraption that I feared.

At Dragon-I, I ordered my usual fav, siew loong pao and the fried la mian with black fungus and eggs. I swear the serving here at MV is much larger than at Centrepoint! Normally at Centrepoint, my bro and I can share a plate of la mian between us and 3 helpings of the siew loong pao! Wan Joo had this pork and rice dish that was suprisingly tasty while Jia Ern had the same as me. For desert, we had the sago mango pudding with pomelo and again, I was pleasantly surprised. Sometimes when you go out with different people, you try new things whereas with my mum and bro, we always order the same thing. And PS, it turned out that the stupid chicken was only from 6-9 pm sheesh.

We were soon joined by Pooh, Ariff, JJ and Andrew but we had to leave at 1.40 in order to catch the bus. And wth, of all days the shuttle had to come early and we missed it! Omg. We sat down and waited in vain until nearly 2 pm, by which we had to fork out for a cab back to college because we didn't want to wait for the 2pm shuttle and miss Francis' class.

Well so much for being so goody-goody. The others; namely Brian, Debra, Tash and Fei Ni were apparently stuck in a jam at IKEA while similarly, Pooh and Ariff were stuck in a jam at MV. Thankfully, Jia Ern had picked a good driver who took us by a long route, but one which was uncongested. At first Joo and I thought that he was trying to cheat us by using a long route, but it didn't turn out to be the case. And we were the only ones back first! And we were twenty to twenty-five minutes late to boot!

On American Idol:-

I caught the 8TV repeat at 9.33 pm yesterday after watching the results show at 8pm. Omg I was sooo gutted that Matt Giraud had finally left the show for good. I actually loved his rendition of "My Funny Valentine" which I thought was innocent, heartfelt and emotionally moving. Mr. Cowell quite rightly called it "brilliant". But he was still eliminated! T_T

At the same time, I also loved Kris Allen's cover of "The Way You Look Tonight", which I actually enjoyed more than Michael Buble's version. But my fav Danny Gokey stole the show with a show-stopping performance of "Come Rain Come Shine". I had become a little frustrated with him in recent weeks, as his vocals had been consistent but his showmanship had been bordering on clumsy and akward. But yesterday night, Danny showed he's ready to make it a fight to finish by raising the bar one more notch and powering through a fantastic performance Well done!

And the impossible also happened...Adam Lambert was in the bottom 3, and in the bottom 2 no less! It was between him and Matt, and for one heart-stopping (hopeful, I must admit) moment, I actually thought he would get the boot over Matt. Looks like the whole gay and *kissing another man* photos has done him way more harm than good. And as much as I don't like him, he's crazy talented and the show would be a lot less interesting without him. And though I love Matt..between him and Adam, he deserves to go more than Adam. After all, he's already been brought back from the dead twice!

And fantastically, Chelsea rocked Europe by earning a 0-0 draw with Barcelona at Camp Nou on Wednesday night in the CL. It was the first time Los Blaugrana had failed to score at home since May 23 last year, when Man Utd had come a-calling at the same stage of the competition. The Golden Guus had got it tactically spot-on again, and the defensive drills clearly paid off with Bosingwa, Terry et al handcuffing, shackling and harassing Messi and co; and generally keeping them quiet all night. Barca had a whopping 71% possesion, but the Blues stood firm with Petr Cech making some brilliant saves and we take the advantage home to Stamford Bridge with us.

UCL Semis 1st leg:-

Chelsea (A) 0 Barca (H) 0
Man Utd (H) 1 Arsenal (A) 0

Tomorrow night:-

Chelsea v Fulham
Man Utd v Boro
Liverpool v Newcastle
Sunderland v Everton

El Clasico: Real Madrid v Barcelona

Are you sure that we're awake? It seems to me
That yet we sleep, we dream. -A Midsummer Night's Dream

Mock, Mock and Mock

2009-04-29T19:29:00.003+10:00

Thursday: Statistics II mock

Tuesday: Chemistry Unit 5- Transition Metals and Kinetics
Core Mathematics Unit 4

Economics Unit 5A: Labour Markets: N/A
Economics Unit 6: UK in the Global Economy: N/A

Still debating when to request Unit 6. Perhaps I will come back during the second week of May and do it. Hmm. A feasible option.

Stats mock tomorrow, so back to studying after this. More on CL and A-Levels ball tomorrow :)

Derby win

2009-04-26T15:02:00.003+10:00

What a week it's been for Frank. First his ex Elen Rives goes public with her pitiful tale of how she's holing up in a *dingy* flat in London with the two girls while Frank *parties* in his 8.5 million pound townhouse; and how she's been begging him to take her back but the heartless *b******** refuses to. Oh grow up Elen. You're the one who moved out.

Then there was that now famous *rant* on LBC Radio live, where Frank lambasted DJ O'Brien for calling him "scum" and insinuating that Frank was a bad father on air. Judging by the comments posted on the Internet, Frank seems to have won over the vast majority of fans and listeners alike with his passionate, eloquent defense and heartfelt response. Frank's a family man and always has been.

Adding to the ignominy of it all, the insensitive O'Brien had chosen to hold that live debate on the anniversary of Frank's mum's death.

And by some horrible coincidence, this weekend's match was to be at Upton Park, the arena of endless booing and bitter jealousy directed towards Frank. The fans had never forgiven him for moving to Stamford Bridge way back in 2001. Tough. Their loss was our gain.

Even in the 10 minutes I saw, Frank was magnificent. Every touch and pass was intelligent, masterful and perfectly controlled. He didn't lose his composure eventhough his every touch and corner was booed heartily by the stupid fans. The piece de resistance came when he provided the winning cross for Salomon Kalou to poke home the only goal of the game. Eventhough we dominated the second half, it still needed a brilliant Petr Cech save to keep out Noble's penalty. 1-0 Chelsea, our first derby win of the season, and 1-0 to Frank; against anyone who has ever doubted him.

At the end of the match, Frank was the last one off the pitch. To quote the telegraph, he milked the adulation of the Chelsea fans; cheering and celebrating with them and perhaps as a cheeky little gesture, tossed his shirt to a West Ham fan. MOTM and a true Chelsea hero.

The Silly Dream Ditty

2009-04-23T18:31:00.006+10:00

Dedicated to Jia Ern, because her eyeballs will be rolling 90 degrees after reading this

Once the lights are off at night....

I dreamt a bone upon a throne
I'd left my bags a plane that'd flown
And worse, my purse in garbage thrown
I popped a bubble that I'd blown

I dream of custard creams that beam
So vile their smiles, yet they beguile
I dreamt I'd run a thousand miles
So short the run, seemed but a while

I dream of fish with tails that swish
I dream of dogs that live in bogs
I dream of hogs that look like logs
I dream of frogs that live in fogs

I dream of pigs that fly so high
I dream of twigs that laugh and cry
I dream of flies that pass me by
And dream of pies that are on the fry

I dream of black cats carrying bats
I dream of white rats wearing hats
I dream of girls with curls and pearls
That whirl and twirl and swirl the the world.

I dream of beaches filled with blondes
And statues made of prawns and bronze
I dream of pines that wine and dine
I dream of feet that toe the line

Last night I'd dreamt of everything
In fact I'd dream of anything!
But gone the chance of continuing
Because I heard the alarm clock ring

Pointless randomness. But do be nice, because this is the first poem I've written this year, and fancy, it's already April! My little ditty is nothing compared to Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes though! I absolutely loved the songs that the Oompa-Loompas sang in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...inventive, wicked and funny.

Hate Everton for drawing with Chelsea bleh.

One Hand on the Handle of the FA Cup

2009-04-19T22:57:00.003+10:00

Oh cheers, it's been a great week for all Chelsea fans. First that momentous UCL victory over Liverpool, and now our fantastic 2-1 win over Arsenal in the FA Cup semis at Wembley last night.

Great stuff. A pulsating match, packed full of drama and loads of entertainment even for the neutrals. Chelsea started sluggishly, the midweek Champions League hard-fought victory over Liverpool looked to have sapped them of life and energy. Arsenal dominated early play, applying pressure and running circles round the defense. And my worst fears were confirmed when Kieran Gibbs neatly sidestepped Ivanovic, crossed to Adebayor; who in turn played the ball back to Theo Walcott. The ball deflected on Ashley Cole's hand and into the net, past a despairing Petr Cech. 1-0 Arsenal. The Gunners fans went wild, especially since it was Ashley Cole who had played a major *part* in that opening goal.

The shock of falling behind seemed to be the perfect tonic to a still slumbering Chelsea side, and slowly but surely; they started asserting themselves, particularly in midfield. Finally on 33', Frank's spectacular 70 yard crossfield pass finds Florent Malouda and he lashes it into Lukasz Fabianki's near post. 1-1, Chelsea equalise!

From then on, it was, as Paul Masefield later put it, men against boys. The Blues won every challenge, outran and outmuscled the lightweight midfield and when Anelka hit the post; it was a hint that things were about to get much worse for Arsenal. The half-time whistle came too soon, and with it a feeling of dissapointment, because Chelsea were just about hitting top gear.

The second half was not as exciting as the first, with both teams starting out cautiously. You got the feeling that Chelsea were eager to find the net again to settle the match without extra time; while Arsenal were more content to sit a little deeper and defend. Delivery from set pieces was poor; and there were only a smattering of half-chances for either side. Finally, Wenger brought on Andrei Asharvin for RVP in the hope of unlocking the Chelsea defence and injecting some creativity into a midfield that looked short of their best.

The minutes ticked on, and frustration began to mount. I too, was annoyed because it was already nearing 2am and I didn't want to stay up too late in case the game went to extra time or worse, penalties. In the form Petr Cech was in, I dare say we didn't have a fantastic chance. Thankfully, on 84', Frank made a speculative pass forward to Drogba. Fabianski excitedly and perhaps stupidly came to claim it and completely misjudged it. Drogba easily shrugged off Mikael Silvestre and from a tight angle, rifled in a shot into the far post of the empty net.

2-1 Chelsea.

Joy for Chelsea, heartbreak for Arsenal; and Wenger brought on Samir Nasri as a last throw of the dice.

Too little too late. It was a nervous last few minutes plus extra time but when the final whistle sounded, the relief and ecstasy was evident on all the Chelsea player's faces. The cameras settled on Frank's happy face for a good few minutes, showing him going to the fans and pumping his fist in joy; hugging John Terry and joining in a group hug with the other players. And at the other end of the spectrum, the cameras panned to a dejected Lukasz Fabianski. His two howlers had gifted us a place in the final. Poor boy, and on his birthday as well.

But on a glorious return to Wembley, the better team had won. Manchester United probably awaits on May 30 but in our current run of form; I don't think even SAF would relish taking us on. Viva la Blues

Watch Out Barca!

2009-04-16T23:16:00.006+10:00

It's 75 minutes, 5-3 on aggregate to Chelsea. Through to the semis? Far from it.

Alonso had single-handedly reduced our defence to rubble, smashing home 2 goals past a shaky Petr Cech and equally shambolic defense sorely missing John Terry. Spurred on by the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, Liverpool were ready to fight to the death to turn the tie on its head.

Guus Hiddink's blood pressure was soaring through the roof, tempers and emotions ran high around Stamford Bridge.

But on 76', up pops Lampard with the goal so badly needed, the one that would finally put an end to an astonishing night of comebacks. A simple tap-in, and 6-3 on aggregate to Chelsea.

But Liverpool weren't done yet.

Daring to defy the odds, somehow Lucas and Kuyt managed to squeeze home another 2 to give Liverpool renewed hope of pulling off one of the greatest comebacks since their 2005 Istanbul victory.

6-5 on aggregate now. One more goal and Liverpool would be booking their flight to Catalan next week.

89': GOAL! Lampard shoots a stunner past Pepe Reina and once and for all, throws Liverpool out of the UCL for the second season consecutively. What a night. An own-goal from Pepe Reina, a bullet of a free-kick from Alex and a brace from Lamps sealed a memorable night for the Stamford Bridge faithful.

Stamford Bridge roars in appreciation, the players mob him. What more can I say? I've praised him to the heavens already, there's nothing left to say. He just keeps on going, and you'll know somehow he's always there to save the day (most of the time). Claudio Ranieri made one of the best moves of his life, paying 11.5 million pounds for Frank back in 2001, who is worth his weight in gold many times over.

Oh wait. There is something I have to say.

It's an UTTER disgrace that he wasn't on the final shortlist for the PFA Awards. And I'm not the only one that thinks so, The Mirror does too. What an injustice, when you consider the inconsistent likes of Cristiano Ronaldo there. And the fact that 5 out of 6 of the short-listed players are United players...why even Arsene Wenger is grumbling!

However, the victory does not mask the glaring defensive errors that must be rectified before Messi and co. come a-knocking. Thankfully, the return-leg is at Stamford Bridge, hopefully giving us the chance to salvage the tie should anything untoward happen at Camp Nou in the first leg.

But, I'm not getting carried away; Arsenal in the FA Cup awaits at the weekend (so looking forward to it, with my parents in Ho Chi Minh I can finally watch it live at midnight) and the pursuit of the triple continues.

Bring On The Reds!

2009-04-13T18:06:00.002+10:00

We survived a late scare, but oh well. All 3 points in the bag thankfully.

Chelsea 4 Bolton 3

Whew! I thought it was going to turn into that horrific 4-4 draw with Villa like last year. Thankfully, Chelsea were already 4-0 up (2 from Didier, one from Ballack and a penalty from Frank) before a mad 8 minutes yielded 3 goals for a stubborn Bolton side. I didn't watch the match...was watching the Man Utd one. A good game, but I feel Sunderland should really have gotten a result because apart from a Macheda moment of magic, Utd were playing with their backs against the wall. It was an added bonus and pleasant surprise to see Ben Foster making his PL debut for the season, but sad to see him make a real hash of a corner to gift the equaliser to Sunderland.

Man Utd 2 Sunderland 1
Spurs 1 West Ham 0
Liverpool 4 Rovers 0
Arsenal 4 Lactics 1

Oh it seems like lucky number 4. All the Big 4 except Man Utd scored 4.

PS A stroke of good fortune at the MPPJ library led me to finding Frank's autobiography: Totally Frank. Great read, I couldn't put it down. But I wish he had left it to later, because there would have been at least 5 more chapters based on what's happened at Chelsea and for him on a personal level since the book was published. But maybe there will be another one after retirement..hmm...

Done and Dusted?

2009-04-09T23:01:00.008+10:00

In the words of another fan: Today, I'm proud to be a Chelsea fan.

We know we're good, but did we think we could ever be that good again?

Those days of 4-0 and 5-0 romps seem so long ago; if not for the fact that I had watched them, I'd be asking: Did we dream it all? . Instead, those bitter memories of that 3-0 thrashing at Old Trafford, and that heart-breaking 1-0 loss at Stamford Bridge that had seemed to doom our entire season come to mind.

We lost our record, we lost our faith.

Dumped out of the Carling Cup by Burnley.

Squandered the lead at the top of the EPL table.

Taunted that we have an ageing team that's too old to win anything.

Our season looked like another painful trophy-less pill to swallow.

But we had one last ace up our sleeve.

And so enter the REAL Messiah.

His name is Guus Hiddink.

If anyone had doubted that our season was far from over, let the message be clear: The Blues do not give up without a fight.

24 hours ago, Anfield had seemed like an impregnable fortress; only the impossible would save us now. Deep down inside, I was hoping for a draw. As long as we scored an away goal, we would have a decent chance of breaking them down at Stamford Bridge.

But The Golden Guus finally did what so many others had failed before him: He tactically outwitted the European master at his own game. Exploiting Benitez's favoured zonal marking system and deploying a 4-2-1-2-1 formation that completely snuffed out Gerrard and Torres; the Blues outjumped, outmuscled and outran Liverpool. 2 Ivanovic headers and a bonus goal from Drogba inflicted the worst European home defeat for Liverpool ever.

They can bleat about their missing Mascheranos and their simpering Skrtels. But last night, the better team won.

After the dream start from that early Torres goal, it looks like Liverpool's European 'dreams' are in shatters. Anything can happen, but nobody can see Liverpool putting 3 past Petr Cech at the Bridge next week.

A statement of intent in true blue (pun intended!) style. You have been warned :D

...............................................................................

Stand on the hill

Feel the breeze

Whip your hair about

Smell the leaves

Lift your arms

See the cascade

Of verdant petals

Feel the gentle

Whisper on your skin

Reach out

And grasp one

Tear it in pieces

Let it go to the wind

See it whisked away

To lands unknown

Spinning and spiralling

Then lost in the horizon

A new journey

Unseen by mine eyes.

Random Writings On the Wall

Inheritance

Guilty Hehe...

SLUMP!

Memories

Dark Days

FINALS

Macro Exam

Shocking?

The End of a Bad Week

Back to Work

Catching Up

Home Sweet Home

Strolling Around Sydney

Love Quotes Part II

END OF EXAMS

:)

Little Snippets

Group Work

Quick Quotes

2x

We Are The Champions!

I Want to Tell You...

2-0 to the Blues/IH Harbour Cruise

7th Heaven Part III

Football is a B*tch

The Ugliest Words in the Dictionary

Chelsea 2 Manchester Utd 1

Flavours of South America

7th Heaven Part II

Beautiful Dreamer

Manly Again!

CHELSEA OUT!!!!

Update

O-Week

Chelsea CRISIS!!!

Down Under

Drogba 2 Arsenal 0

Fond Farewell

Royal Roger

You Are The Best Midfielder In the World...

(Delayed) Outings

Blue Blitz!

Movie Mania

Christmas Time's A'Coming!

Welcome to the World of Mac

Out of the League Cup

3-0

The Impossible

Lemons and Lemonade

4+5

Pick-Me-Up

Sing the Blues :)

The Legal Regal Eagle

Derby Day

Aimless

Writer's Block

The Impending

Yes, it's all good

How la?

The Big Day...Tomorrow That Is

An Eventful Few Days?

Uno

Community Shield Winners

What If

Behind Time!

Flat

Treason???

Fortnight review

Lazy Day :)

October

(Prom) Nightmare on Elm Street Part I

Hallejujah!

Of Tear Gas and Tears

Believable?

FA Cup Winners 2009

Kings of Europe

End-of-the-Season *Blues*

Untitled As Yet

Done :DDDD

End-of-the-Season Blues