it's only 4 days into the billing month for my optus internet plan, and i've already consumed 55% of the given download bandwith!


granted... i have been a little michevious and i've downloaded heaps more than usual since the new account started on September 27th.


and i know this is going to seriously cost me when, at the end of the month - as i'll be slogging for my finals and in urgent need of immediate on-line assistance - the speed gets reduced to compensate the excessive use. sigh...

i really need to lay off the downloads... really... or i'm gonna be in deep shit trouble...


oh look... the new episode of grey's anatomy is on youtube! ;)

welcome back to school everyone...

by now, the controversy of last night no longer plagues me. without being too descriptive - because life's too short to be obsessing about negative symantics - the person i've had feelings for over the last 19 months was finally faced with the blatant truth. no... i didn't cross my bounds of girly-dom and partake in actual confession, but the issue is out there. it seems obvious that he's known about it for quite some time... but in true male fashion... prefers if i come clean before he does ;) and truth is i don't blame him. we've both been playing this game for almost two years... it's hard to call it quits. but it doesn't mean i'm gonna give in either :p he knows that i need to move on from this... and thankfully he understands why too.

but as the title suggests... the moon was perfect out tonight. and just as i started to regret the conversation i'd had the night before, my day was utterly compensated ;)

as i dragged myself to school for a team meeting (note: there'll definitely be a future post on the outcome of that one!), i sat on the tram ride home thinking that i was about to settle into another night alone - full of pondering and wondering what a mess i've possibly made with that particular friendship. then the phone rang ;)

by 7.30pm hizwan had come over to print his assignment and i was left marvelling at the indecipherable codes that he calls work. we packed up and rushed off to swinburne university for it to be submitted. there was a minor setback (what with us being locked out and all!), but things turned out great in the end. i even managed a grand tour of the campus at nightfall... which, if you ask me, is the ONLY way to see a school ;)

with aaput and abu (ashvin) busy for the night, me and hizwan thought we'd make full use of our much-deserved night out. we grabbed two boxes of krispy kremes before heading over to bismi for a nasi briyani dinner. a spur of the moment decision saw us catching the last 11pm show for rush hour 3 and capped our night in immense fits of laugher.

for two 19-year-olds, the last month has been rather treacherous to us both. hizwan's been buried under the load of so many assignments as i fret about my imminent re-application to melbourne uni. we'd both gotten sick and made trips to the hospital... at the same time. personally, hizwan's been navigating his way about being the best boyfriend he can to a girl all the way back home and i've just been trying to accept the consequences of chasing something that - turns out - i no longer wanted.

we spent the entire night talking and laughing and being brutally honest about the things and the people in our lives. about the dreams we have. and about the dreams we've lost...

it was just what we needed...

and as we looked up at the night sky through the blistering cold... i knew that things could only get better...

because in cloudless sky... the moon was perfect...

i need a new pair of pants...

actually... make that plural... i need MANY pairs of pants...

my faithful pair of low-rise jeans have finally given in to the 6 years of torture i've subjected it to - and max's unforgiving claws - and is now ripped beyond repair.

every other pair that currently occupies my wardrobe space has SOMETHING hinky about it...

i just love the fact that we can just link up videos on this blog! no longer am i needed to contemplate and decipher my inner feelings and thoughts and spend the time conjuring up ways to best describe them. instead... i can let the youtube gods do it for me ;)

i was feeling a little sentimental today about the old studio apartment i lived in last year. it was tiny and always messy... but i'd experienced most of the best memories of my time here in melbourne in that room. and no memory stands out more than sitting with joel, mark, kevin and jacq...

crammed in the apartment...

listening to this man...

and guys if you're reading this... you'll know exactly who i'm talking about. but this recording's newer than the ones we saw... so eventhough it's basically the same songs, he changed it up a little ;)

i dedicate these songs to the tan boys... the first one to mark and the second one to kevin... i remember how much you two loved these songs (mark even memorised them!)... so i can't watch them without thinking of both of you :D joe... you say that you're easily amused right? so here's my 'end-of-assignment' present for you ;D and jacq... let's hope that one year on... these songs will make much more sense to you :D

enjoy!

can't write much as i still have an entire apartment to clean... but i stumbled across this last night and laughed my ass off!

to kevin and all my other male readers... no... it's not russell peters or stephen lynch... so you can turn away now ;) it's the gag reel from the second season of supernatural... so yeah... eye candy on top of it all :D

so if you wanna laugh until you cry - just as i did when i watched this at 3am this morning - here you go!!



have a great week everyone!

my day can only best be described by the song bachelor girl sang in the mid-1990s:

"... i walked under a bus. i got hit by a train... keep falling in love... which is kind of the same..."

okay fine... i didn't walk under a bus... or get hit by a train. nor did i fall in love with anyone new today... BUT i do agree that falling in love feels like all those things. you should hear the rest of the song. got some rather notable mentions in there that you might find interesting... ;)

but all that aside... yes... i've had a pretty adventurous day. as i sealed my fate of being the poster child of melbourne's public transport system, i attempted EVERY service that they've had to offer in one day!

i took the tram to school to attend my wretched 8am chemistry lecture. after classes i rode the bus to chadstone shopping mall to run errands for mom. after, i took another bus from the shopping mall to oakleigh station, and finally headed home on the flinder's street-bound train. ;)

though sleep deprived as i was, today was a rather interesting day! my chem lecturer judy returned from her 8 week 'break' and i was glad to no longer be regalled with history lessons on chemical compounds by our sub doug (sorry doug... you're an awesome tutor... but leave the 200-large sessions to judy aiight? ;p). but from week 2 to week 9, all that we've known was the crawling 2-slide-a-day pace that doug had been subjecting us to. so having judy back to our usual speed was alot to get used to today. let's just say i'm in need of plenty of studying soon... sigh...

at 12pm i navigated my way to the bus stop outside the main entrance. now i was told a week a go that the 767 box hill bus would take me to chadstone... all i had to do now was figure out which side of the street that was one. i walked through the usual underpass that would take me to the tram stop, but this time bypassed it and climbed back up the road to the bus stop on the other side of burwood highway. unfortunately... wrong bus... and wrong side of the highway. so as i watched the RIGHT bus pass me by on the other side of the road, i hiked back the way i came and had to wait another 30 mins for the southland sc-bound bus to pick me up at 12.30pm.

when i got to chadstone, i found out that elyece was there too! (burwood's chadstone = city's melbourne central ;p). so i called her up and the two of us met up for lunch in one of the three famed food courts. it was nice catching up as we barely get to see each other now that we don't take any of the same classes. surprisingly, i found out that elyece too was planning on transferring out of deakin at the end of the semester! though her dreams take her to do vetrinary science at murdoch uni in perth, western australia, it was nice to talk about it openly with someone. i've been at deakin 7 months and only 2 people know of my plans to apply to melbourne. the only other person apart from elyece because he too was planning on moving! i know it's nothing to be ashamed off, but i guess i didn't want to go harping about it to all my friends... because no matter how i spin it, it makes deakin sound like a pit-stop for me. and yeah sure... maybe it is to some extent, but no matter how you spin it either, deakin saved my life. and no matter where my life takes me after this... that part will never change ;)

after lunch, elyece rejoined her wandering friend for some shopping as i got to my errands. BUT FIRST... a quick stop at new zealand natural to indulge in the sinful-and-yet-not chocolite (yes mom... i know you hate me ;p). walked over to priceline to buy a few things and then to david jones at the end of the strip. for those of you who don't know, chadstone is the largest shopping mall in australia (or was it the southern hemisphere?)... basically it's HUGE! but i've found that nothing is unbearable when you have a fully charged ipod and a cup of soft-serve ice-cream with you ;)

now obviously my commuting for the day relates somewhat to the bachelor girl song... but i can assure you she wasn't singing entirely about buses and trains ;) and neither am i...

you see this isn't my first post of the day. during my 1 hour break in between classes, i headed to the library to use the computers and penned a long entry down. i saved it as a draft because i didn't have the time to read it through before publishing it... which is always a mistake when it comes to the things i write!

the post had the makings of a bad emo song. because right before i wrote it... i had an moment of enlightenment (or atleast that's what my aunt calls it). my avid readers and close friends would know all to well of the presonal tribulations that i've faced over the past year. more so of a significant person that's been causing me the most heartache. they would also know of the hard decision i've had to make with regard to that person... in order to salvage the friendship the that i believed was more important than any else. even so... it's been very difficult to let something that complicated go... and all the while with a smile on your face. we're trying to to go back to the way things were. to the best friends we were when it all began. to start all over again ;)

it's been hard and it's taken alot out of both of us. but today i saw a picture that made it all okay for me. i'd been dreading that moment for the longest time. to be faced with the truth in such a blatant way. irregardless, i knew that it was a moment coming. that some day, i'd have to come to terms with the reality of our lives... the photo is an epitomy of my greatest fear with relation to us. or atleast it was...

i'd made a resolve and i plan to stick to it. so when i saw the picture, i had the breath get stuck in my throat for a few a seconds, but swallowed and let the air fill my lungs again. it happened and i didn't fall apart. it made me angry of all the things you've done to me lately. all the things i've brushed aside because i try to hold on to the person you are when no one else is around. i'm sorry that you've seem to have seen me at my worst... but i'm alot stronger than you think! and that i'm gonna be just fine ;)

so what does one do when a moment of such clarity presents itself to them?

they watch cute guys on tv ;D so yeah... randomly... here's a sneek peak at michael vartan's new tv series 'big shots' ;) enjoy and have a great weekend!

if you were sick in bed... so sick in fact that you've had to cut two days off school... and have had to make a trip to the clinic to stock up on the meds you were now readily consuming...

since beginning my post-secondary education in australia, i am pleased to report that i have never - NOT ONCE - ditched a day of school. never have i buckled to the muses of the devilish imp on my shoulder and succumbed to the comfy vestiges of sleep in the early mornings or the late night soirees to keep me up past dawn. granted that it was never really an option considering that the immigration department here has the right to deport you if you attend less than 80% of your classes... BUT STILL! ;) i was a proud practitioner of relentless but diligent education and i wasn't about to let anything effect my current 'nerd' status.

until today...

you see as i write this, i am currently lying face down in bed as i watch max attempt to catch her shadow on the wall in front of me. if this was any other thursday afternoon, i would be settling down to lunch after a morning of back to back chemistry in school. because today, i took my first day off!

yes... no waking up to the sound of an alarm (heck i didn't even set the alarm!) and no need to scurry from the bedroom to the bathroom with max running around me. i was under strict instructions by a higher power, to not go to school at all costs and stay medicated in bed... talk about a divine excuse to ditch a day at uni... sigh...

the gastritis (which is what i'm calling it... stomach bug or food poisoning just sounds too damning ;p) took hold rather badly yesterday. i got home from school in fits of shivers and with the constant urge of (in the words of mark tan)... empty my stomach contents... and not in the way they teach you on those adorable diaper adverts!

sigh... but after causing quite a scare, within family and friends in kl and melbourne... i tucked into bed at close to 2am and awoke this morning to feeling a whole lot better ;) i'm still a little on edge and definitely heaps more conscious about my tummy's qualms, and may even have to put in a visit to the hospital is things re-escalate... but for now i think i'm good :D

unfortunately it appears that puasa is out of the question. as daunting a task as it appeared to be, i was rather looking forward to resuming the tradition this year, now that all supposed ailments were out of the way. but after last night's episode, mom's adament that i won't be allowed to take the risk. for good reason i'm sure... but the stubborn ass that i am can't help but be a little disappointed that a stupid stomach hitch is keeping me from fulfilling my last puasa as a teenager :( looks like you're on your own again hizwan... though i seriously think you should join me... you're not as invincible as you think you know?

so yeah, it sucks living alone when you're feeling like crap. as entertaining as she is, i haven't exactly taught max any tricks worth boasting about. she can't exactly call me an ambulance or run down the block to my cousin bakar's place to let him know now can she? sigh..

but oh well...

jess with her best impression of a mad scientist ;)

my artsy fartsy shot :D

but as my morning took to an amazing start... it's ended pretty badly. after my coffee session with katie and elyece my stomach acted up and i've been feeling pretty crappy since. though i'm glad to report that i'm feeling much better now... mom insists that i take the day off school tomorrow and go to the doctors if need be :(

in the mean time i'm gonna be curled up in bed and praying that the man upstairs cuts me a break and stops time so i can type up my essay by wednesday... sigh...

as usual on fortnightly tuesdays, i attended my human anatomy practical from 10am to 12pm today. and as usual in these pracs... not a single person is spared from being 'violated' in the name of education. two weeks ago we had to palpate the arm and shoulder to study the pectoral girdle... a task, you can imagine, a lot easier for the boys than it is for the girls -_-".

today, it was the hip joint. but just as we rejoiced in the notion that we wouldn't be needing to draw the line between male and female propriety, our tutor troy does well to cease our relief...

first, it was the very public and very embarassing task of identifying the illiac crest. for those of you who consider this relative greek, know that it's the most anterior or upper part of your pelvis. basically the bony thing you can feel around your waist *yana envisions many readers around the world poking their tummies* ;) so for a girl like me - who prides herself on dressing in long layers to maintain the optical illusion of being skinny - it was absolutely awful having to ride my jacket and two tops up to find those ridiculous bony landmarks. mind you... WITH AN ENTIRE CLASS OF CLOSE TO 20 PEOPLE PRESENT! sigh...

then it was the duty of determining the range of motion at our hips. the theory is an imbalance in muscle function can cause you to possess an abnormal body stance. in translation, you pelvis could tilt anteriorly (front) or posteriorly (back) with respect to whichever muscle is working too hard or too little. with the target of the day being the quads, hamstrings and glutes, the powers that be in the deakin syllabus world thought it prudent - and undoubtedly rather amusing - to have the students lie on the ground with their feet up in the air.

now this would usually be fine. me and my co-victim in crime, steph, would take turns in succumbing to the humiliation and the two hours would be over with. but today, steph came in with a terrible cold. so i figured it a bad idea for her to lying on the dusty ground with its cleanliness in question. so there i was... at 10 o'clock in the morning... with my multi-layered top and baggy jeans... flat on the ground with steph moving my leg around as though i was an unstrung puppet!

the first task saw me on my back with one leg up in the air. steph had her palm underneath my thoracic spine (lower back) and was told to lift my leg up as high as it would go until she could feel my spine crushing down on her hand - this meant that i had exhausted my glutes and hamstrings, so further movement would be my pelvis compensating... which would be bad. troy told us that clinically, people should get a 14o degree range of motion.

my leg went 167.

steph's response? "oh my god you're a freak..."

the second excercise required me to be face down on the ground (imagine walking past the classroom at this point... very interesting indeed...). steph had to palpate the spinous process of my third thoracic vertebra (translation: bony bit on my lower back). the rule was, my leg had to be flexed at the knee until she could no longer feel the spinous process. this meant that my spine was changing it's postion to accomodate the movement... yet again... a bad thing. but as steph bent my knee... nothing happened. she tried again... slower... nothing happened. she tried hyperflexing my knee... nothing happened! ;)

steph's response? "you're a freak..."

just when you thought the humiliation was over... we had to bend over and touch our toes. that would be simple enough, if only troy didn't make steph hold one side of my waist while i did it :D this was supposed to test, once again, the condition of my hip when i bent over. troy explained that the ideal configuration would be that of our pelvis doing a 60 degree tilt, as our spine took over the remaining 30 in a 90 degree bend. but what usually happens when people bend over to pick up stuff, they use their back/spine entirely and don't abide by the pelvic rule at all. when steph got me to bend over (no dirty thoughts kevin!), my ballet instincts kicked in and i went straight for my toes. with or without my back, this was something i'd been trained to do since i was 4-years-old.

steph's response? "oh my god... you just went like... went like... kat you're a freak..."

so as troy explained that if anyone didn't react as they were supposed to because they were flexible, steph decided to spare everyone the curiosity and point directly at me.

just another day in human anatomy :D

as previously reported, i attended trinity college's awards ceremony on thursday night. thanks to mark's speedy response in relation to my resilient nagging... i now have the pictures from the night to show you ;)

so for those of you who've wondered how it was that i managed to attend such a prestigious event with my pathetic academic performance, i turn your attention to the 4 blessed souls who saw it prudent for me to be there despite what my final certificate said. jacqueline, kevin, ai-lynn and mark were invited by the school to be acknowledged for their achievement of a higher than 95% graduating average.

as the other three had submitted blank guest forms, it was the duty of mark to see that i made it back to trinity's gates. and though he may argue that i was only invited because his mom was detained for the night, i'd like to think the gesture was extended with more noble purposes (but then again... mark noble? hmmmm...).

the dresscode was formal, so i had to literally raid my wardrobe for something decent to wear. a feat never simple for a college student on a basic budget. but thanks to mom's principle that every girl needs atleast one item of girly clothing in her cupboard... i managed to find something in time ;)

but as i made my way to the lobby of jacq's apartment, i was confronted with the prospect of being massively overdressed. kevin was sitting on one of the couches waiting for jacq, dressed in the shirt and pants he'd worn to the clinics during the day. when jacq joined us, she too had donned a shirt and pants. but since they're jacq and kevin - standing ridiculously tall and ridiculously skinny - they could both be wearing pyjamas and the dresscode would be met! thankfully mark showed up a few minutes later... in a suit! (props to aunty doris for making him dress up!)

after rushing our way over to evan burge (and after a rather interesting encouter with a michael buble-wannabe tram conductor), we made our way to trinity's main grounds for the first time in 8 months. and being the overly excited person that i am when it comes to all things trinity, i was the epitomy of elation as my friends navigated melbourne uni's grounds in the dim of night. when we got to evan burge, the procession of teachers in robes had already congregated outside the entrance. as we entered buzzard theatre, i was greeted with a sense of sentimentality. the last time i was in that room, i was performing my final drama perfomance in front of the entire school. the walls had been pushed back, not unlike the evening of our drama exam, and i could remember the nerves and the excitement that me, jason, ai vyn and janice had being the first team of the session to perform. shortly after walking through the doors, i heard my name being called. a group of faces i'd recognised were seated at the far end of the theatre. rhu jae, melissa, andrew and bunch of my other classmates were grouped together as they waited for the ceremony to start.

and soon it did. as i took my seat behind jacq, the procession of teachers entered. the dean of department of land a food resources gave a speech (to which the mention of food made me extremely hungry... much to mark and kevin's amusement). within 20 minutes, the awards were being delegated. i moved to sit behind mark to get a better view, as i was the designated photographer for the night. but as i watched all my friends, who were seated in the row in front of me, stand up to receive their certificates, i could not help but radiate with a sense of being immensely proud.

these kids were like apart of my family. we'd been through so much together within these past 18 months. and i guess seeing them up there, shaking hands with the dean of trinity as he congratulated them on their tremendous achievement, being proud was all i could think about. did i want to be up there with them? absolutely. but did i resent them for doing as well as they did? hell no. so i cheered and whistled as their names were called... ignoring the embarassment of being the only person to do so. because my older brother, younger brother and two younger sisters deserved it ;D

after the procession was over, we moved to the next room for light refreshments. though kevin and jacq took to the invitation as dinner, me and mark made a beeline for the one person we were dying to see. our chemistry lecturer patricia. she'd spotted me whilst leaving the theatre, and greeted me with a big hug when i found her next. she said that she knew i would be there, like as if the experience of being back wouldn't be the same if i wasn't... that she could count on my friends to bring me along. it was so nice having heard that... cause it was like as if i never left. and it was a salute to my friends, who even after 2 semesters apart, have managed to still keep us all together... even if we were one member short ;)


patricia asked how i was doing at deakin, and could already tell how i missed being on melbourne's campus. but as always she invested her faith in me and reminded me that everything was going to be okay ;) me and bill, my chem tutor for the year, got into a talk about how we were both inclined towards organic chemistry now... a talk i NEVER thought we would have considering the struggle i had with the subject last year ;)


we even met our literature teacher claudio, who had left the february intake after the second term. upon discovering that mark was in dentistry and me in psychology, his usual british/italian humour deduced that we needed to open a joint practise... what with the insane dental fees, patients would need a psych consult after! this continued into a good 15 minute conversation about how this new 'psychodental' experience would work ;) hehehe... random, but extremely entertaining.

walking back through melbourne uni's grounds is always a great experience for me. but on this night, my feet were begging for mercy. the heels i was wearing were being brutal and my toes we already cut and bruised. but as we walked jacq home (sorry you couldn't come with us... happy studying for that test on tuesday and don't overdo it! you'll be fine! and i'll see you soon ;p), me and mark went to kevin's place so the boys could indulge in their nerdiness and trade lecture recordings. it was nice just hanging out, the three of us. what with all the awkward stuff that'd existed between us all these months, it had been a very long while since we just chillled in each other's company. and with mark passed out on the bed, kevin on the computer and me playing the turned-off keyboard, feelings of comfort and security that which we possessed in the early days of trinity crept its way back ;)

by close to 9pm, berlin called, prompting me and mark to reluctantly leave our comfort zone (him half asleep on the bed and me without my shoes to plague me) and meet her for dinner at the new rice bar on swanston. now like all my friends who spend enough time with me, berlin was stocked with stories about our present company. and being her first introduction with mark, i was curious as to how he would behave. but amazingly, mark was in full charm mode and managed to elicit a few laughs at the table. unfortunately he was exposed to the full extent of sri aman girly madness, as me and berlin talked about the upcoming prom (and yes... we do have our own language there mark... so shush).

mark was nice enough to help me walk my way back down to arrow as we waited for uncle lawrence to pick us up. capping off a night that could not possibly have been better ;)

because of better days that keep on coming... baby steps is all we have ;)

katyana azman
1 may 1988

i'm different... and it doesn't bother me one bit...

writing till the hours blur.
REALLY nice cars.
consuming as much dark chocolate as humanly possible.
listening and singing to songs till i know every word by heart.

being with the family and friends that make me happy.

jacqueline sim
joel lee
jacqui kong
camelia soo
samantha sim
syafiq azman

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