sabotaging fate

finally...

2010-06-03T04:37:00.005+10:00

in highschool, i pledged my allegiance to a boyband named 'blue' and more so to the youngest - and often most notorious - member, lee ryan. he was only 18 then...

so i guess it's only natural that now, at 27, lee releases a song that describes - in chilling clarity - everything i've been feeling for almost a year...

for a long time, i've felt nothing but lost. all through my life i turned to the doubt shown by others and the criticisms to my abilities to spur me on in any endeavour i ventured. i dictated my life at proving other people wrong... i still do.

but over the last few months, the growing consensus that the decisions i've made with regards to my life stop somewhere south of damning, have been pretty hard to tolerate. instead of giving me motivation, it's forced me into a corner and instigated a spiral of confusion and self-loathing.

this song was everything i've been afraid to admit... everything i've been wanting to scream out loud at the top of my lungs to the people who try to scare me. this song was all about people like us who've a chosen a path that they need to stick to against rhyme or reason - and are willing to go to hell and back just so we can...

this song... finally... gave a voice to the dark spaces in my head...

end of the month...

2010-05-31T00:09:00.004+10:00

where has the month of may gone?! i usually gravitate my yearly calendar around the fifth month... may's always been yana's january ^^ who needs the 1st of the 1st... when the 1st of the 5th always came with presents ;)

but work has undoubtedly had my attention this entire semester. 12 weeks have come and left... and my sitting through the GradDip orientation session still felt like it was a few days ago. thankfully, the end of any trimester comes with certain perks!

exhibit A:

the pre-existing side of my desktop has striked out by a ginormous margin... all i have left to do is to submit the final version of my lit review - which theoretically isn't due till just before the beginning of the next timester - and i'll be in the clear! ^^ this also means that if everything goes according to plan, i'll get to go home in just under 3 weeks! *happy dance*. i'll only be allowed back for 6 days... but hey. if you're away long enough... you'll take anything you can get ;)

that does, of course, mean that i have to survive finals first... noted by the latest additions to my screen O_O. but oh well... a necessary evil ^^ (note: funny... that's what my classmates and i refer to the entire course we're doing! XD)

anyways... i better try and get a head start on that studying. took the entire weekend off despite promising to do otherwise :( been feeling pretty down lately, for specific reasons unknown. as always, i'm blaming it on the insane amount of work and stress this course has me under. not that i should be complaining... if any program would introduce me to the horrors of med school... it'd be this! all of mom's dr friends have said that if i could survive one year of postgrad... medicine would be a walk in the park! funny how i don't really believe them O_O hahaha!

but yeah... work is stressful and my mind's divided over the fact that i want and should be applying for med school at this point. however, it so much feels like something i should sit down and take the time to do - a luxury i can't afford with trying to prep for assignments and exams. jacqueline's gone back to singapore as part of the summer break she never got - which basically means i have no one to talk to when the day ends :( she usually goes on about her love for all things lee minho... and i decide that my boy khun would kick minho's ass at all things hotness-related... and we squabble for about an hour while i make the trip home from uni. completely unimportant in the grand scheme of things... but not having someone to 'argue' with everyday has kind of reinforced the silence.

it's strange, considering the fact that i used to talk to the boys more. i still do speak to mark on an average daily basis... but eversince i decided to take stock of our friendship, the content of our conversations have markedly (no pun intended) changed. i realised that my relationship with the boys i knew from trinity - namely mark and kevin - started out backward. they were responsible for talking me down and/or putting me back together after some pretty major drama... and friendships shouldn't start that way! after spending some time at deakin and 'getting a life of my own', i realised just how messed up our interactions were! and with all the stuff that me and kevin were going through after our first year in melbourne, he could no longer became the one i unloaded my crap on to. a duty that - till this very day - i feel guilty about imparting on mark.

sarah likes to refer to my 'relationship' to both mark and kevin as a 'the threesome period' O_O. rather crude and grotesque when mentioned out loud... but kind of logical when thought about in context. i was such a drama queen that BOTH of them had to be around to baby me when i needed it back then. if kevin was detained for whatever reason, mark would make sure i knew that he knew that he was now the one 'in charge' of taking care of me. for an 18-yr-old girl whom had had a rather crappy track record with the men in her life, that notion made me all warm and fuzzy each day. but i'm 22 now... and i'd like to think i did some major growing up these last few years. kevin and i have maintained an awesome friendship, but it's my relationship with mark that remains the subject of many personal psych assessments.

over the last couple of years, i couldn't help but ask myself one pretty basic question:

'if mark had a choice... if someone had given mark the choice of not being the one responsible for yana's nonesense... if i was in fact shameful enough at the time not to call him in particular whenever my life got bad... would he still be that person for me today?'

i don't deny that he cares for me. i say that with complete confidence. because i would do just about anything for him in return. but i'm not foolish enough to blindly say that he's as emotionally vested into our friendship as i am. he knows every detail about my life... all the things i'm not proud of... all the things that keep me up at night and scare the shit out of me. and he knows those things not because he asked or was there to witness it first hand - he knows because i'd call him up in a manic and force it onto him. and yet in 4.5yrs... i could count the amount of times he's done that to me on one hand! but mark isn't an overtly emotional person. he'd much rather stew over things that piss him off and (like a pressure cooker) let the steam blow off on its own. so i've stopped fussing over this inbalance on my part... he knows he has my undivided attention whenever he needs.

but i guess what this ridiculously convoluted post is trying to get to, is that i've stopped. i looked at my friendship with mark - one that means the absolute world to me, one that i want alive and kicking when my kids need someone to spoil them - and realised that i didn't want it governed by trauma. i remember talking to him on the phone one day and he said "you don't tell me things anymore". i brushed him off jokingly and said "yeah, i think i've fulfilled the 'yana's dumping of problems on mark' quota for the day", and he said with complete seriousness "you know there's no such thing. there's no quota for you to fill, kat. if you have something on your mind, talk to me". it was the sweetest and scariest thing anyone's ever said to me. i realised that i couldn't condemn him to the perpetual role of being my saviour. i was almost 20 at the time, and didn't want our friendship dictated by my mental and emotional instability. i guess i wanted mark to be my friend for me. for the funny, brilliant and drop-dead gorgeous, me! XD

so i don't call on him anymore when i'm feeling down. in fact, i make a point to NOT call him when i'm feeling like crap. which is why the last few days have been pretty horrible. i'm seriously beginning to think that i'm suffering from a comorbid case of depression as a result of my IR (another fascinating tid bit i discovered during my lit review research). then again it could also mean i'm a lazy bum who's burnt out and couldn't be bothered with work ;) but either way... the conclusion of this semester has been downright miserable - and with mom out of the country and operating on a reversed timezone, i can't even rely on my 4-5daily calls routine to keep me going! :( but i don't want her feeling bad about me and rushing home (or maybe even over since apparently melbourne's closer to where she's at). hahaha. i'm just gonna have to 'bite the bullet' as she colloquially says... and pray that the 'omg i want to stare at the ceiling all day and hope the couch consumes me' feeling goes away in time for finals ^^

oh and before i put an end to the post that should've concluded 6million words ago...

HAPPY BELATED 22ND BIRTHDAY, CAMELIA SOO!

i know i wished you online and on facebook... but i figured the more avenues the better! ;) love you!

till the next time verbal diarrhea consumes me! ^^

updates!

2010-05-20T20:39:00.002+10:00

firstly, another screencap...

am i the only one who happens to think that that looks insanely awesome? XD

sadly, it has become somewhat of a guilty pleasure of mine to cancel off each deadline after each submission. though i must admit i haven't been as on top of things as i should hv this far along in the trimester :(

i've been feeling like crap physically since the school-year started, and i blamed all my dizzy spells and feverish episodes on the fact that my body was literally rejecting the need to do work. my habit of doing things at the last minute probably didn't help ease the panic attacks much either ;p some lecturers were nice enough to grant me extensions with barely 24-hrs notice whenever these bouts of 'sickness' came around - most commonly whilst i was sitting in front of the computer attempting to finish my assignment on the morning of a deadline. but my last two papers required a legitimate mc from the dr's office should i need a few days extra. and since i'd never been one to head to the hospital without duress, i pulled anothing string of allnighters and cram sessions in an attempt to churn out a 750-word and 1500-word assignment due 2 days apart. added on to the fact that i'd only just gotten my 400o-word lit review draft sent to my supervisor the day or so before!

but like clockwork, another dizzy spell claimed me less than 12hrs before. and these moments of dizziness... they weren't like the usual ones someone gets after standing up too fast or after spending a day in the blazing sun. these spells didn't involve any actual dizziness. in those brief moments, i felt the blood drain from my head, a cold sweat consume my entire body, followed by insane nauseaseness before the inevitable "oh-my-god i'm going to faint" sensation. totally dramatic... totally attributable towards 'assignment stress' XD

but as i was creeping up on my fourth episode, mom was freaked and forced (see, i stayed true to my resolve even at this point!) me to head over to the clinic and get checked out. this suited me just fine since it would require me to miss the afternoon's seminar session in which the 750 was due. hahaha! so i drove over to the clinic on chapel street and had a sit-in with the doctor. it'd been 2 years since i saw the guy last, so it took him more than 10minutes updating my file in the system (and yes, they actually key things into the computer in front of you here) on all the ailments and drugs i've accumilated these past 24 mths.

evidently, i was just there for the mc (naughty, i admit). but i'd been nursing a cold since my bday 2 weeks before and wasn't entirely against getting that taken care off since: 1) writing my assignments would be sooo much easier without having snot issues, and 2) what kind of flu even lasts that long?! i told him about the dizzy spells as an add-on, more concerned over how to get rid of the cold. but after taking down my history, and a quick stethescope to the chest and back - he'd ruled that my cold was a small infection that would heal in no time with antibiotics. he was more concerned with the dizziness... right.

i guess what i've been trying to get to is that, university students don't take enough care of themselves. there i was, blaming every ailment, every warning sign on the fact that i had a pile of assignments and commitments due - whilst simultaneously putting myself at a greater risk than i even thought possible! turns out i might have been hypoglycemic the entire time! O_O

yeah i had to google that too ^^ but in simple english it basically means that my IR-laden, lazy-ass somehow managed to neglect comsuming enough sugar. i had a pretty good laugh in the dr's office when i heard that, since everyone i know could tell you that i consume so much sugar on a daily basis that my blood probably tastes like treacle! but i'd been skimping on meals (as i always do during assignment/exam season) but taking regular doses of glucophage as prescribed. here's the equation the doctor gave me:

the lack of sugar coming from my missed meal times + the glucophage already working to cut the levels of sugar in my system + the cortisol released by the body in times of stress burning more sugar from the body + my IR-ness causing ineffective insulin, requiring my body to work harder than most to burn glucose = i was spent.

it's been about a week and i'm glad to say the cold is gone ;) i've fought the urge to run away from all things sweet and actually downed bottles of juice whenever i knew food wouldn't be on the agenda for a couple more hours. a bad trade i know... but effective in terms of keeping the hypo episodes away. i promise to be more diligent when my assignments are done with... really! ;)

here's another bit of news that'll make up for my irresponsible behaviour:

i kinda passed the GAMSAT!

i know. how does someone kinda pass the gamsat? well the exam is apparently not graded on a percentage system, so the numbers mean squat to me. all i know is that it's above what some of the uni's in australia are looking at in terms of admission scores. the 'kinda' bit comes in since i dipped 2 points below the curve on one section and won't know until the applications have gone through how badly that'll effect me. so for now, i 'kinda' passed. and i'm 'kinda' over the moon about it ;)

so there you go... a quick run down of the last couple of weeks. my bday party was awesome and maybe if i time permits i'll transfer a few photos from facebook over to this blog for everyone to see ^^ graduation was the day before and kinda cool too since they actually took the time to separate us out - so i walked on stage as the emcee declared "graduating with a bachelor of science, with distinction". i got copies from the professional photo session which i'll try and scan and upload as well (warning: i looked like a doe-eyed pillbury doughboy in a dark blue robe XD). hahaha!

i also had an interesting afternoon today. after almost 3 years of complete absence, my buddy joel has resurfaced! (and no i didn't mean to make him sound like a submarine ;p). reminiscing does make people sentimental, so joe decided it was about time we caught up after a session of 'trinity photo oogling' a few days before. me, joe and jacq had coffee on degraves lane today... and it was kinda awesome. so much has caused us to change over the last few years, and yet enough of our old selves remained for us to get along and talk incessantly for 3 hours ;) though i must say it was kind of embarassing to realise that despite being the eldest one there, i had absolutely NOTHING to contribute when they talked about their exes. sigh... hahah!

till next time! bighugs!

a present for the times ;)

2010-05-06T00:24:00.003+10:00

as i write, i think of beginnings.
of funny classes, freshie friends, candles lighting the night skies.

as i write, i think of then.
of thick and thin, of pulling through, of keeping going until the end.

as i write, i think of just.
of contact kept, of drives with friends, of effort and deserved success.

as i write, i think of now.
where Jacq is screaming, bells a-ringing, and something burning on the stove.

happy birthday, kat. and happy graduation.

yours humbly... modestly... and unassumingly...

improvements...

2010-04-27T01:48:00.002+10:00

baby steps... baby steps... ^^

another reason why i love my school...

2010-04-19T13:47:00.003+10:00

as you'd probably know from my stick-note deadline system, today marks a ginormous day in terms of submissions. i have a 750-word colloquia analysis and a hefty 1,500-word stats assignment due by the end of the day. but last night as i crammed for the final stretch... the most inconvenient thing happened.

i spiked a fever!

i can't even remember the last time i HAD a fever. though in retrospect i know it's probably due to the retarded sleep cycles and unhealthy levels of stress, but it couldn't have happened at a worse time! i sat at my desk close to midnight, trying as hard as i could to make my two assignments sound somewhat educated - but my body just wasn't having it. i was supposed to pull an all-nighter last night, but instead i was curled in bed by midnight with a heavy head, stinging eyes and chills - classic fever symptoms. don't you just hate the feeling when your temperature's high and you turn over in bed but you can actually feel your pillow heating up?
so i took two panadols and prayed that a 2-hr nap would cut it. unfortunately not. i slept 3hrs longer than i should've and was still feeling like crap when i yanked my head off the pillow. in a last ~~desperate~~ ditched attempt, i wrote to my lecturer... knowing full well what MOST teachers from MOST schools would say when a student called in sick during assignment day.

instead, i got this ^^i hate this course. i hate how it's taken every good thing about psychology and all the dreams i've had on the back burner should my medical school goal go flying out the window, and turn it against me. i hate how it's making the most brilliant congregation of people i know doubt themselves. i hate how it's making ME doubt myself.

but amidst all that...

i love my school. everything about it ;) and did i kind of also mention how awesome my lecturers are? ^^

looking up!

2010-04-15T20:58:00.003+10:00

finally! after weeks of hell... some good news from my thesis supervisor ^^

the other side of life

2010-04-14T23:50:00.006+10:00

looking at my two laptops side by side, one can't help but be rather disturbed... and amused! it's like having an obedient, dedicated child... with an unruly, playful twin! ^^

gosh i have so much assignments to do T_T

what was long overdue...

2010-04-13T00:51:00.004+10:00

i finally got around to doing what i should've done the minute i got a facebook account...

i cancelled my friendster account

i was surprised to find that some people are actually STILL using it... and they msg people like me who've decidedly conformed to the masses and switched to the happy place with the blue background - and wonder why i haven't replied after THREE YEARS. hahahaha.

in other news, assignments are hell :( a peak at my previous post will show you just how badly inundated the 4th years hv become! thankfully the right side of my screen has made some marked improvements since!

well little by little atleast...

so unfortunately, all i'm able to do for the moment in terms of updates are these comp-tutorial-esque screencaps... which means you'll probably see another one of these when the two 19th deadlines get scratched off ^^

till then!

oh, and before i forget...

Happy TwentyFirst Birthday,
Jacqui Kong!

nitey nite ^^

oh boy...

2010-04-08T21:12:00.004+10:00

i used to write dates on post-its and stick it to my bedroom wall in reminder of all the deadlines i needed to keep each semester.

but since technology has seemingly made paper redundant, i decided to give my computer's sticky note application a go.

i looked back at my efforts and went...

oh boy...

for all those kids out there who've dreamed of getting into fourth-year psychology... from someone who's there... all i can say is:

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

thought of the day...

2010-04-03T00:50:00.000+11:00

assignments are evil

if i didn't have a reason to love deakin already...

2010-03-11T00:40:00.002+11:00

"when things get bad, it means the shit has hit the fan. and that's okay... because it happens. but eventually you'll wake up and realise that you're getting the hang of it. THAT or you've just run out of shit... either way it gets better!"

-dr. alex mussap
lecturer, deakin university

"are any of you smart?" (silence) "okay... are any of you stupid?" (confused... but still silent) "are any of you not supposed to be here?" (silence) "did any of you trick the university into letting you in here for fourth year?" (silence) "okay, so if you're all supposed to be here, and neither one of you tricked the uni for entrance, i can deduce that all of you earned your places. correct?" (vague nods) "you... beat 1,000 applicants to be here. you ARE the elite population of this university. i could walk out onto burwood highway and pluck 100 people randomly off the road and that total would not come anywhere near the calibre of intelligence that sits in this room before me. and because you are sitting in those seats, you deserve to be here."

"(about stats) i know you're scared. i know you're worried that you might not be able to get it. so i'm telling you this, not to make an ass of myself - though i do that superbly already - but to make a point. i'm dyslexic. i have been my entire life. you will be receiving notices from me throughout the year about the unit with appaulingly bad spelling because of it. i was bumped from one school to the next growing up because experts dubbed me a fool. and now this fool is an associate professor at deakin university lecturing on research methods. we have established that each and every one of you is smart. and if a fool like me can get this subject, you certainly can. and i swear to do everything in my power to help you."

-dr. mark stokes
lecturer, deakin univeristy

on monday, the collective of fourth year psychology students started their first day at uni. it didn't matter if we were enrolled in the undergrad honours program or the postgraduate diploma program - we were among the massive minority and the stress of living up to those expectations was evident everywhere i looked. i dreaded the coming year and seriously doubted whether i even bleonged there - among the class of deakin's 'brilliant ones'.

but instead of jumping right into the curicullum... instead of patting us on the back and throwing the work at us, having assumed our competence... alex and mark each took half an hour from their introductory lectures to comfort us. to remind us that the overwhelming fear fades. and that despite our supposed position in the student hierarchy, they intended to guide us every step of the way.

once again, deakin took the time to address us not as a class of fourth-years... but as individual kids. kids who are guilty of having no confidence despite our grades... and immensely terrified of the vastly approaching future ahead. at deakin i know i'm not just a face in a crowd...

and for that i will always be grateful ;)

here we go...

2010-03-05T12:27:00.001+11:00

behold, my coming trimester! sigh...

not as bad as many others i suppose... but it's like the school was trying to give me another reason to detest mondays ^^

definitely not in kansas anymore!

2010-03-05T00:31:00.002+11:00

i contemplated writing a lengthy recap to make up for the month-long hiatus i'd subjected this blog to. but since it's close to 1am, my writing faculties have evidently gone home for the day and i'm finding it increasingly difficult to string two coherent sentences together without turning back and erasing entire paragraphs. so i'll just stick to dot-points for tonight ;)

i'm back in melbourne - have been for almost two weeks now. leaving kl was the closest thing to hell i've experienced in my lifetime. i cried when i reached central (which is literally 10 minutes after leaving my house)... cried some more when i boarded the plane... intermittently (and i by that i mean throughout) during the 8 hour flight... and consecutively for the last week. it seems going back home for as long as i did severed the attachment i'd made with melbourne over the last few years. my apartment no longer felt like home and i was still riding on the generic 'holiday-feeling' you get when you visit a foreign country. even my school lost all vestiges of familiarity, as i found myself horrifically seeing the benefits of packing up and moving back home for good. these last couple of weeks have genuinely schooled me on the true meaning of home sickness... a plague that in its briefness reminds us of what's truly important in life - but in severity make you hover slightly north of invalid status. i spent days curled up on my sofa because the house felt too strange from the bedroom i'd spent the last 3 years decorating (since it's about the only space in the apartment i have creative control over ;p). i slept whenever i could and occupied my waking hours staring blankly at the ceiling. the tv stayed on, though for the life of me i couldn't recall what was showing. i'm a graduated psychology major... but i didn't need my degree to tell me something was seriously messed up.
thankfully the worst has passed and i'm back in my room again ^^ it took me 2 weeks to get over being homesick this time, the longest i've suffered in quite a while. i threw myself into prepping for gamsat and getting the house reorganised - which helped distract me and lessen the depression somewhat. max came home today too... which will definitely mark some improvements in my mood ;)
i'm still sticking to the eating plan. it's alot harder to do now that i'm alone, since my age-old habit of skipping meals threatens to rear its head everytime i run out of groceries or merely oversleep in the mornings. mom's gotten me to swear that i'll go shopping on a weekly basis just to make sure i'm not skimping on food for convenience. i'm 6kgs down and only a kilo away from the 10% i promised my doctor in january ;)
school hasn't started though i've attended the enrolment days and locked in my research preferences. eventhough the projects we undertake this year in no way confine us to a major for specialisation, i wanted to sign up for a topic that kept me within the clinical environments that i was comfortable with. ironically enough, most of the subjects that were listed where based on disorders that i have personal experience with! that means one of two things for me: that either those disorders are becoming increasingly prevalent within our asian society... or that i basically know alot of very sick people ^^. my first choice is a research project by dr. mark stokes on mirror neurons in the brain and autism. eventhough i'd probably be more confident in the project relating to OCD and depression, i liked the idea of working on this particular project because it stays true to my love for neuro and potentially shedding light on a disorder that affects 1 in 160 babies - and yet very little is known about it still.
the gamsat is 2 weeks away. objectively i know i'm not prepared for it... and thinking about my lack of preparedness sends me into a frenzy most days. this exam literally determines the rest of my life and the fact that i still have the time to type up my blog at this hour when my chemistry text book lays open next to me is an astounding fact all on its own. haha! but i'm determined to stay calm and kick ass in the papers as best i can ;)

and with max now having reclaimed her sleeping position on my shoulder, i take it as my cue to turn off the laptop, get a little more studying done and get to bed ^^ melbourne has always been the place where dreams come true for me. it's the place where i spend 8 months a year fighting for future i want, at the cost of leaving all that i love and care about 6000kms away. even on days when it feels that all is unjust in the world and the only solace i can hope to obtain lies with me calling it quits and heading home... i know that melbourne is where i need to be for now ;)

stuck

2010-02-10T01:36:00.002+11:00

the title pretty much epitomizes how i'm feeling right now...

stuck.

this thing with millie is really starting to get to me. though everyone at home (with the exception of hafiz) knows what's roughly going on with her, i feel like i'm the only one carrying the burden around. at the risk of sounding insanely self-centred, i was the only one in that examination room who was given the play-by-play of millie's symptoms. so now every time she falls asleep - which is about every hour or so on average - i feel like the walking dead. every time she looks me in the eye, i feel like the walking dead. every time i carry her and cradle her huge tummy in my hands, i feel like the walking dead. i feel like crap every second that i'm around her and even more so when i'm not and wondering if she's okay. in 24 hours i've grown obsessed with whether she's taken her meds - which is stupid because it's a daily dose, which brings the consumption count to about one since yesterday. i don't even have time to worry about whether i'll get to keep max because the thought of potentially losing TWO of my cats is something my brain can't even seem to process.

and since a pity fest is never complete without more self-loathing, i really really miss mark and jacqueline. in fact, i miss all my friends. ridiculous, i know, considering most of them aren't very far away to begin with. but as i often do when faced with troubles of any nature, i run to them on instinct. i pick up the phone or take that 15 minute train ride just so i can vent and/or cry about whatever it is that's bothering me. instantly, i feel like i can breathe again if i do. this has unfortunately developed into a habit. by the time mark grew accustomed to being my default panic button, it was barely a year into our friendship and i was yet to hear any stories about the things that plague his life. jacqueline has been like a little sister to me since we first met, and i have only seen her cry once. same goes for jacqui, cammy, afiq and anyone else unlucky enough to be inaugarated into my close circle of friends.

i feel like i've always been the one that needed saving - irregardless of whether i was elder one in the equation. i was always taking and consoling my conscience that merely telling them that i was there, that they would come to me when they needed me - that THAT was my way of giving back. and yet neither one of them ever has. accumulatively, each and every one of them could dictate the entire list of things that have ever happened in my life. each primary references to the convoluted mess that is the chronicles of katyana azman. but if i were the one tasked with penning their memiors... i probably wouldn't make it past the prologue.

this basically translates to two things. either i am the most emotionally challenged individual on the planet - completely incapable of organising my own feelings that i resort to needing others to sort it out for me. or that i've been a crappy excuse for a friend and just haven't been paying enough attention. either way... things aren't looking too good for me.

so as much as i want to cry. as much as i want to scream. as much as i want to hear mark and jacqueline's voices and have them give me their signature 'pat pat's and 'big hug's... i'm not going to. because knowing that they're struggling through their own problems and never needing to be coddled as i do, makes me want to cry and scream even more.

i REALLY miss my friends. and i REALLY don't want to have to leave home. and i DEFINITELY don't want to have to watch if millie starts to get sicker. but topping my list of things i don't want to do:

i REALLY don't want to have to need people.

the second-month ache

2010-02-09T01:49:00.004+11:00

i dread februaries.

february has undoubtedly become the month with which all the joy and happiness stocked up over the summer, begins its painful and agonising retreat into oblivion. in school, it marked the ending of our first month back - whereby the honeymoon period of 'getting to know the new year' came to a halt and homework was begrudgingly re-introduced. when i left for college, it meant leaving home for the first time and having to adjust to a life of isolated independence. when university started, it became all about proving my worth and fighting for the dream that now seemed so close at hand. 2nd and 3rd year were no different - trying to push aside the previous year's disappointments, packing that suitcase and trying my hand, once again, at climbing the highest peak possible.

so why did i think the february of my graduate diploma-year would be any less frustrating?

i'm due to be back in melbourne in less than two weeks. 13 days to be exact. i drove over to the education agency today and paid my first semester's fees - which means that in a couple of days my eCoe will be issued and turning back would be a moot point. but unlike the years that came before this, i haven't been back for as long as i have this summer. i wasn't given the opportunity to get re-attached to the place i called my fulltime home for 18 years. since 2006, leaving melbourne at the end of each semester was a goal rather than an award for my efforts... the frosted icing to the impossible and insanely lonely cake. but the more trips i made, the less flying to melbourne felt like a punishment. my friends were there... my uni was there... my apartment was there... max was there ^^ so what would happen if had most of that taken away?

the landlord whom i had hailed as the best in the world decided to make my life a little more interesting this semester. after 3 years of occupying 808/700, he's decided that i'll only be allowed to extend my lease on one condition: that i move back into the house without max. my previous realtor has disappeared and a new property management agency has taken over - perfectly fine except that a new agent requires new papers. and as i started sigining my initials on each page, mom noticed the clause about not keeping pets on the premises. when i asked them to reconfirm max's position with the landlord, i get told that he is now unwilling to grant me permission to keep her. we are thus left with two options:

A) sign the lease and find max alternative accomodations
B) burn the lease (and i mean literally) and find another apartment within the next 13 days that'll except me, my furniture and my schizophrenic feline.

i dread februaries.

to add to my growing lists of problems is the latest addition to our family - baby millie. and no, i did not have a child during my 2-year blogging absence. millie is a 4.5 mth old persian kitten that my mom and i got hafiz for his 13th birthday. for 2 months she was the epitome of perfection. she provided our household with the laughter and amusement we once enjoyed when spike, maya and jinx were young. but a few weeks ago, that all changed. i've spent almost every week camped out at the vet's office in subang, attempting to suss out every new ailment that comes millie's way. staying true to the trooper that she is, she's endured so much and come out as playful as always. today i was told that her latest battle may very well be her last.

the doctors suspect that millie has a condition called FIP. for the life of me, i can't remember what it stands for, what causes it or what exactly they know about it. but what i DO remember is that vets call it a 'death sentance'. insanely rare in cats as young as millie... heck, insanely rare alltogether. but what it boils down to is, if millie has FIP... she won't survive no matter how much of a trooper she's been.

i sat in the examination room and watched her scurry around through all the crevices she could find, completely oblivious to the judgment that has now fallen upon her. it made me doubt whether i'd ever be able to let go of my patients in future... when potentially letting go of a cat i've had since december seemed almost impossible. it was the question that pushed me to want to help children in the first place: "how could something so difficult, happen to someone so little, when they are too young to even understand why?" and yet today, it was the question that made me resent the injustice of it all.

but as i said, it's just a suspicion for the moment. they assume... they guess... but they aren't certain. though the diagnosis seems to lean towards FIP, millie's behaviour and eating habits wholly defy the disease's symptoms. the vets are boggled and are hoping that millie will prove them wrong. i'm praying that she does too.

have i mentioned i dread februaries?

it seems that my entire month will be embroiled in feline predicaments... both at home and internationally. but februaries always suck because it ultimately marks the end of a chapter.

tomorrow i start my 13th day and final week as an intern at prince court. in two weeks i'll be heading back to melbourne to start a new year at deakin... something i'm not too thrilled about. going back to the happiest school on earth, yes... having to leave my family to do it, not so much. this summer has made me realise how much i miss being home. being the one to pick hafiz up from school and driving him insane with embarassment as i cheer hysterically from the bleachers at sports' day. to hang out with mom at work and see her face light up whenever she describes a new project to me. to spend more weekends cruising around with the top down on the z4 after a girls' night out, just the two of us. but most of all, i miss being home when the days are good and horrendously bad - just so i could give them both a hug at the end of it.

i dread februaries because for the last 4 years... it has taken everything that makes me feel safe, happy... everything that i care about... and throws it 6000kms away.

day two as an intern!

2010-01-22T00:40:00.003+11:00

and here endeth my second day as a clinical psych intern at prince court! ^^ there's something ridiculously happy about stepping off that elevator in the morning and walking the hospital lobby. i remember jacqueline telling me once that she'd be silently frustrated whenever her patients cancelled their appointments. back then i used to say "why?! isn't them NOT coming to the hospital a good thing?!" and she'd say back to me, aghast "hell no!". today... i understood what she meant.

i arrived at the lmc wing at 9:15am. sat down with my mentor and was briefed on today's duties. went to my desk and did lit reviews. ran down to the HR department to make copies for the seminar my mentor's conducting on saturday. came back up and continued at the computer. ran back down to HR with the second lot of papers my mentor forgot to attach. returned to my desk. left the lmc to buy a bottle of water. came back and drank my pills - in front of the computer. walked across the corridor to the staff lounge and had lunch (or in my case carrot sticks, apples and the shake supplement) with my bosses. went back to the computer and read more articles. my mentor left at 3:00pm. i called down to HR to find that the documents wouldn't be ready till tomorrow. i clocked out at 3:30pm.

i was at the hospital for six hours today and spent around 80% of tht time in front of the computer screen (if you include my bathroom breaks ;p). as much as i found the process interesting - what with me researching the psychological components involved in cardiac rehabilitation - i finally understood what jacq meant when she said NOT having patients throws off your entire day.

my mentor won't be around tomorrow but i still hv to report in so i can show her what i've compiled in my reviews over the last two days - an essay i am yet to get to unfortunately. for the first time in ages, staring at my computer is the last thing i want to do tonight ^^

here's to day three! ;)

catching up...

2010-01-21T00:53:00.006+11:00

for those who rely on my blog to stay updated on the inner-workings of my dramatic life , here's a quick rundown of the milestones you've missed:

.school.

1. i did get accepted into melbourne uni after my first year at deakin. however, i was offered a place in the new BSc program... meaning i would have to start my course all over again and disregard the credits and work i'd gained over the previous 12mths. some of you may read that sentence and consider those conditions a miniscule price to pay for a spot back at my dream school (and undoubtedly the goal i'd revolved my life around since leaving kl). but here's the equation many of us in melbourne have come to understand...

melbourne university = money

the course annual fees were already double of what deakin was charging me and i didn't feel it fair to incur that increase on my mom. plus, as much as it was an honour to be acknowledged for my performance with a place at that school, i knew that the standards they impose we're going to be a tall order to follow. basically... i was worried that i was about to pay a crapload of money and start flunking out. so i stayed at deakin and had the most amazing 2 years i could have ever asked for ;)

2. which brings me to point number two.

i've graduated!

on november 5th, 2009 i was an official graduate of deakin university with a BSc. i completed my major in psychology and got a distinction along with my degree ;) i opted to walk the ceremony with my friends - most of whom are local australians - and skipped out on the international graduation in november. so hopefully on april 30th, 2010 this blog will be updated with some pretty interesting photos ;) [note: mom keeps reminding me that i'm still in desperate need for a dress :( atleast we have the shoes!]

3. i've been accepted back at deakin to complete my fourth year in psych with a Graduate Diploma in Psychology. the same application is currently pending at melbourne uni, so i haven't accepted deakin's just yet ;p (because no matter how i may complain about that school... it's a damn good school and an awesome thing to have on my resume!) if i survive that i'll be able to get partial accredidation from the powers-that-be and be trained and/or employed as a practicing psychologist... should i decide to of course ^^

4. not letting my medical dream go, i've enrolled to sit for the GAMSAT this coming march. it's alot to study for with alot riding on it... so i'll keep you posted on how it goes :(

everything else! ^^

1. my best friend and little sister, jacqueline got her first boyfriend! ^^ it's been about 3 months but the novelty still hasn't worn off! i can't believe you beat me to it, but i'm so immensely happy for you ;) please don't bully him too much and save a couple of weekends a month to go boy-watching with me, kay?

2. as for my real sibling, hafiz is now 13! O_o where have the years gone?! i came home after my final semester to find him almost as tall as i am... and his shoes are already a couple of sizes bigger than mine! (mind you i've held the record in my house as having the largest sneakers for some time now... a title i begrudgingly passed on to him). but deep in the crevices of my cold, bitter and jealous heart... i'm proud of the big boy he's becoming ;) he's now an 8th grader and is breaking as many fragile, feminine hearts as he possibly can... sigh....

3. and since it was never in my nature to have only one best friend, mark tan is still around. hahaha! in all seriousness, i never thought that two people with as much history (both good and ridiculously bad) as we did could ever possess a future more than that of casual acquaintances. we appeared to be a doomed friendship from the very beginning - something more of my doing than his. but it's been 4 years since i first spoke to that brilliant boy at lunch on the day our spm results were released... and we're still at each others' throats ;) he has grown to become truly one of my bestest friends - someone i talk about everything with (even relationships!). mark and i are walking testiments that a guy and girl can care immensely about each other... want the best for one other... will do anything for the other person... and not have to be a couple. he's my best friend for life... and that's all i need ^^

4. my four-year health period has unfortunately come to an end, and i have been diagnosed with yet another ailment. this time it's called insulin resistance, or IR for short. it basically means that i am pre-diabetic... at 21. my doctors aren't willing to condemn me to a life of pills and treatment so they've thrown me into a whirlwind eating plan in an attempt to help me lose 10% of my bodyweight - thereby hopefully reducing my chances of developing type-2 diabetes and all that it entails by 60%. the food is ridiculous and most days i want to curl up into a ball and cry over the fact that i've had to give up the greatest love of my life: chocolate T_T. mom and tee are on this diet with me, so it isn't too lonely a struggle.... but the down side is that they get to end the torture in 3 months. i have to watch what i eat and when i eat till the day i die. the doctors aren't too cruel though - they promised me that i'll be allowed to resume a somewhat human eating regime at the end of my 3 months (even with a nibble of chocolate every once and a while!) ^^

so here's what you need to know for now...

my life will always be about making a difference. to know that everyday i do something to change someone else's life. it was a description that was never easy to fit into the 'occupation' box when teachers asked what i wanted to be when i grow up. it was a definition that plagued me as i tossed between settling in psychology and having 'experts' tell me i couldn't cope in medical school. but today i realised, none of my doubts even mattered.

i helped a little girl today. she was my first patient, on my first day as a clinical psychology intern at prince court hospital. when my mentor walked into my office and told me about her, all the confidence i'd been carrying around all day - the high of finally getting to stand in a hospital - disappeared instantly. what if i didn't know what to say? what to do? how was i supposed to act uninformed and let her tell me, all on her own, all the things i needed to know - the things she couldn't explain to everyone else? how was i supposed to help her, when i was wracked with my own fear that i'd do something wrong and trouble her further.

but from the moment we were introduced, all that worrying stopped. i was finally getting a chance to help someone. for that 11-year-old girl, i was the difference between her silent confusion and the misconceptions everyone had pegged her for. being left alone to get to know her for that hour was terrifying and utterly amazing. to be there when someone learns to trust... learns to open up and share their pain. to be there when you know that THAT moment started the better part of the rest of their lives...

THAT is what i live for ^^

i'm not going to let my IR drag me down... and more so the people that underestimate my resolve.

when i left the hospital today, the nurses looked up from the reception and called out "Dr. Yana, you have two patients tomorrow. see you at 9.30." so i guess there you go ^^

i'm going to spend the rest of my life making a difference ;)

new beginnings...

2010-01-17T04:42:00.003+11:00

for 1 year, 8 months and 12 days... this blog remained dormant.

not anymore.

update...

2008-05-05T23:22:00.003+10:00

i have stories...

i have videos (if i can figure out how to upload them)...

i have pictures...

i'm in search of a new blog skin...

but i have absolutely no time!!

(whoever it was that said the first year of university would be the hardest, obviously never made it to second year...)

so bear with me and i PROMISE to have them up by the end of the week ;)

hughug - yana.

important notice...

2008-03-31T23:54:00.026+11:00

to say that i have neglected my blogging duties would probably be the biggest understatement of the new year. and to blame it on my new semester workload - despite its tribulations - would be nothing short of a lie. for the real reason behind my lack of attentiveness would simply be...

that i could not have been bothered ;)

as most of you would have guessed, i am now already back in melbourne and have successfully commenced my second year of study at Deakin University. this piece of news may come as a shock to some... but i shall leave that for the REALLY long post that is planned to follow.

this entry has a specific and concise task:

1. to inform my fellow blog-readers that i do indeed still have a pulse and will be resuming my online-blabber habit as soon as time permits.

and...

2. to provide a merciless teaser of the dramas to which my life has been exposed to in the recent months (dum dum dum!).

but what kind of story-teller would i be if i didn't reward my loyal readers for their patience? ;) so - as i always do after a long absence - i've added up a whole bunch of pictures which were taken while i was 'away' :D

here are some from jacqueline sim's 19th birthday, on march 21st 2008 :D

[smurfs in the freezing cold ;)]

[the kidnap victim... muahahah!]

for those of you who know the little singaporean genius, you would be no stranger to the outright protests when it comes to anything birthday related. this year - as it has been since i met her in 2006 - was no exception! lucky for her... she keeps the company of a highly sadistic... and highly imaginative bunch of people :D so kevin, mark, ai-lynn, sam, sarah (a very welcomed addition to this year's party planning) and i decided to poke fun at jacqueline's frustrations of 'turning old' by throwing her the party she never expected.

because on the morning of march 21st, at the carlton garden's playground... jacqueline was given a NINTH birthday party :D

[attempting to light the candles amidst the wind...]

[embracing their inner toddlers ;)]

since joel and jack were at ocf camp for the weekend, a second party was thrown in jacqueline's honour on the following tuesday. this time, the boys decided to give her the complete opposite of her friday morning experience ;)

[note: not to worry... it's only orange juice in my cup ;)]

i know it's taken forever for these pictures to make it online... but i hope you had a great birthday regardless, jacq-jacq ;) as for everyone else, have a great week ahead and - not to sound too much like a cheesy weather forecast - stay tuned for the drama to follow! hug hug :D

-katyana

happy chinese new year!

2008-02-07T16:49:00.000+11:00

i know it's been months since i last wrote anything... and judging by my last post, i understand why many of you are inclined to believe that i was engulfed whole by the markets of bangkok ;) but fret not, the reason for my absence belies solely on a healthy combination of pure laziness and - simply put - just way too many things to do! ;p

but as we enter a new lunar year, i'd like to take this opportunity to wish everybody a HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR! and may the year of the rat bring each of us bouts of good fortune and an even better load of angpows ;) [to be used for our own benefit... and not mark tan's crusade for a new gaming console...]

there are SO many things to share with regards to the last couple of weeks, but to draft them into words would require a word limit far more extended than that offered by blogger. so i've resolved to just 'show' you... but THAT, is gonna take some time, so bear with me ;)

but here's a teaser of things to come - pictures taken from my junior, samantha yeap's, thanksgiving dinner party in january 2008.

so just give me a couple of days to scan in some photos and maybe dabble in a little video editing before i share my latest stories with you. till then, have a great holiday and gong xi fa cai ;)

happy new year's!

2007-12-29T17:28:00.000+11:00

so christmas is over and the dawn of a new year beckons. i celebrated my first 'official' family christmas at my new home in damansara heights, and have since rejoined the ranks of my fellow 'sloth-land' inhabitants by sleeping no earlier than 4 am each morning tucked into the great books i've been reading. i'll be uploading the pictures up from christmas pretty soon...

for now i'm sitting in KLIA's 'golden lounge' as i await to board my 3pm flight to bangkok ;)

so have a happy new year everyone and i'll see you guys in 2008!

-katyana-

welcome to the world...

2007-12-13T16:12:00.000+11:00

amidst the chaos and confusion that has seemingly become apart of our everyday lives, one can't help but wonder where all the magic in the world has gone to. why don't people believe in silver linings anymore? why must every good gesture be marred with the question of a catch? and why in god's name must everything be so damn complicated?!

but as daunting as that prospect may be - to live in a world so wrought with uncertainty and forgotten promises - there are some novelties... some gifts... that are capable of reminding us of just how magical life can truly be. when given half the chance ;)

so to my nephew, SETH MOHAMMAD ILHAMI, who was born yesterday - december 12th 2007 - at 10.40am local time in cairo, egypt to my cousin sazlin suhaila and her husband mohd. ilhami... welcome to the world, little one ;) be safe and be happy... and your aunts and uncles over here in kl can't wait to see to you!

a big congrats also goes out to my kak la and abang imi... and also to my auntie margie! who is now a grandmother!!! kl has been so strange without your korean music to wake me up in the mornings... so come home soon! ;)

here's to the season of second chances...

2007-12-07T03:54:00.000+11:00

it's almost 1am and i'm sitting in the only illuminated room in the house. finally putting a visual to the standing perception that was my new bedroom whilst in melbourne, it's nice being able to sit on my bed and know that i'm finally home. that outside the window no longer lies an erratic excuse for weather, but instead the city that i grew up in. the city that knows of all my flaws and weaknesses... and passes no judgement or the threat of being lost in the chaos. because i think at the end of the day, there remains no feeling more gratifying and more liberating for a student than to finally be able to come home ;) to leave all the pressures and all the fears behind and to relish in the opportunity of 3 untempered months with those who know you best.

so that is precisely what i've been doing ;) i got home to a welcome party of my family and a spread of the food i missed! when i awoke the next day... i found myself suffering through a 'good god where the hell am i?' moment! i sat in bed staring at the ceiling for a good few minutes before i realised that max wasn't going to be running into the room soon or that the knock on the door wasn't rizman asking for breakfast ;p and though i attribute that first-time experience to the fact that it was my first night in my new room, mom and hafiz jumped into bed with me the following morning just to make sure i wasn't plagued with it again ;)

apart from spending as much time as possible with my mom and brother, i also partook in another 'first'. from the 19th till the 31st of november, i was a waitress at delicious cafe in one utama. and trust me, eventhough i literally live in that place... it's an entirely different experience when you're on the other end of the dessert counter ;p it was my first official job and it was one of the best things i've done to date. it taught me so much about people and just how different we all are as individuals. how most times, what we see is never usually what we get. and how at the end of the day... despite our differences... we're all in it for the same thing. to be happy... one way or another ;)

so if it was such a gratifying experience... why only work there 2 weeks, you may ask? well the answer to that - apart from the amount of time i was NOT spending with my family when i should have - i was forced to prematurely resign due to the release of my final semester results. for as i sat on a bench at one utama's mph during my lunch break, hafiz told me over the phone that i had done a lot better than i had hoped. 3 distinctions and 1 high distinction later, i am now in the midst of organising my much-awaited transfer to melbourne university. for the last year, it was all i could think about. the moment of finally being able to receive the notice of welcome to the place i was SUPPOSED to be in. but that notion... still remains no more than a question mark...

because a few days ago... as i excitedly called the international admissions office at melbourne university to inform them of the transcripts coming their way, my dreams were deflated as i was told that a letter of rejection was headed for me. panic and fear... the emotions i had gotten all to familiar with round about the same time last year... came steadily back. all i could think about was how i had to go back there. back to deakin. and how much i would give to not have to. to be able to run to jacq, kevin, mark and everyone else who've been waiting for this decision and tell them to save me a seat at the lunch table. to not feel like screw-up anymore!

but as the panic died down, i was told that the decision was premature. the department had processed my application based on only a semester worth of grades... and so it appeared that i lacked a subject worth of pre-requisites. and that all i have to do now is send the rejection letter back to them, with my newly acquired transcripts and a letter of appeal, and the application should be re-assessed. and eventhough i was told by everyone that i should be rejoicing in this sudden expression of charity and mercy, i can't help but hold my breath till the final letter arrives. a letter - i hope - starts with 'congratulations!'. because i already got two that say 'i'm sorry...' ;p

so that's basically what i've been up to lately ;p this year has been amazing, in both positive and negative regard. i fell to the bottom of the well and crawled my way up again... for the first time. i fell in love with my best friend... and got my heart broken... for the first time. and i also realised that the important things in life, aren't necessarily commercialised and similar for everyone.

because 'tis the season of second chances... and anything can happen ;)

curse. fate. or just a sick joke?

2007-11-21T02:58:00.000+11:00

for no matter how far i run...

it'll never be enough...

about time!

2007-11-05T23:07:00.000+11:00

my family has came and left. i've sat for my first final and am cramming for my next one in the morning... (don't worry... i'll specify details when the breath finally catches up with me)

but i gotta spare a few minutes to document this first...

HAPPY 19TH BIRTHDAY JOEL LEE!

here's a quick nod to my younger-older brother from another mother :D

hope you had a perfect day, and know... that even after all this time... and eventhough we don't see each other very much anymore... you're still the other part of my brain (the functioning part atleast ;p).

and i wouldn't trade you for the world ;)

love you lots and big hug!

the dawn of a new day

2007-10-22T15:13:00.000+10:00

to resonate the jubilant cheers that currently fill apartment 808 of 700 chapel street, let me just say one thing...

KIMI RAIKKONEN IS THE NEW FORMULA ONE WORLD CHAMPION!

he may not have achieved his goal of being the youngest ever to win a championship, but no one could have possibly deserved it more. unfortunately i didn't watch the race - which played at 3am this morning - but from what i heard from an ecstatic rizman, the blue-eyed finn gave everyone a run for their money ;) hamilton who?!

welcome back the era of ferrari's reign. for it is the dawn of a new day... with kimi at the helm ;)

katyana azman: an animated rendition

2007-10-21T01:27:00.000+10:00

on days when the world starts to drag you down... it pays to see yourself through the eyes of those you know...

for you may be surprised by what you see ;)

by abdul wafi

*thank you ;)*

i am feeling...

2007-10-20T17:19:00.000+10:00

stressed. lost. hurt. insecure. sad. worried. used. tired.

and i just want to go home...

not too late...

2007-10-14T01:21:00.000+10:00

there's still another half hour till the day ends back in kl... so there's still time to say this...

SELAMAT HARI RAYA

MAAF ZAHIR DAN BATIN

to not just every muslim... but to everyONE who's ever smiled a day in their life ;)

a special mention goes to all those kids who are celebrating this auspicious day away from their families back home...

here's to say that you weren't alone today ;)

let exams ring...

2007-10-06T22:31:00.000+10:00

as i prepare to buckle down and study up for my impending finals... i thought sharing a bunch of photos would lighten the growing depressed mood that's been infecting everyone i know ;)

it's a little delayed - as these pics were taken in early september - but i just got them, so bear with me! they're from jacqueline's prom dress-shopping day. we were in full camera-hogging mode as we took pictures in multiple locations in and around the city :D

federation square:

isn't it appauling the fact that we'd been in melbourne almost 2 years and hadn't been to federation square till then?!

david jones:

city:

bridge road:

while melissa, rachel and janice went shopping, me, jacq, kelvin and pj catered to our ice-cream needs ;)

these were taken during last week's semester break...

japanese lunch with jacq and joel

(and because he missed us so much... he could barely keep a straight face!)

me, jacq and kevin after watching hairspray

so the upload of these pictures cap off my hectic day. i met jacq and kevin for a japanese lunch at yoyogi - to which the ever-so-wonderful mark tan slept right through instead of joining us like he was supposed to! ;) we indulged in our weekly ritual of buying groceries at QV's safeway after having stolen a handful of plastic bags from big w... before i joined riyana for another session of prom dress shopping :D (think i'm gonna start charging!)

to make up for his absence... mark let me leave my bag and groceries at his apartment while i took riyana around. and though many eyebrows were raised at the large chemistry text book that sat quietly in my krumpler, and thus hurting the crap out of my shoulder, i considered it a foreshadowing of the worries to come...

study study study... sigh...

thank god mommy's coming in a few weeks :) yay!!!

random... but oh so good!

2007-10-04T09:54:00.000+10:00

i am immensely sleep deprived.

i'm running high on concern with regards to my sinisterly-approaching finals.

and i'm plagued with a slight tinge of worry, having left a friend alone for the first time since having his heart shattered last night.

but amidst my troubles... and the tummy ache which seems to be rearing its ugly head back today... i found a song which brought a smile to my face ;)

it's Follow My Lead by 50 Cent featuring Robin Thicke...

personally i've never been a fan of the superstar rapper, but as with all things touched by the adorable man of pop and rnb himself... this song is just what you need when you feel like life is dragging you down ;)

enjoy...

thanks guys ;)

2007-10-02T01:44:00.000+10:00

i know most of you have been left relatively in the dark recently. i incessantly talk full of angst about a specific person who's caused me so much frustration. and truth is, it was just a lot easier to assume that those who know me best, knew enough... and so i didn't have to repeat the tortures that run around in my head.

and before you get all excited about me finally revealing his identity... sit back down and put away that bowl of popcorn. i'm not going to be doing any declarations here. i do not use my blog as an outlet to talk about other people!

that's cause i choose to only talk about myself :D

but in all honesty, this predicament has made me realise just how easy it is to lose sight of what's important in life. and that i'm way too young to be stressing about all this stuff. i'm going to be in school for the next decade... i'm gonna be needing as much brain space as humanly possible!

that having been said... i have a few people that i want to thank. people who have heard me out and have yet to pass judgement. people who have stood by me and shared in my personal pain... irregardless of distance or previous history ;)

to my mom and the rest of my family, thanks for having the faith in me to take care of myself - and yet never leave my side when the enormity of the situation took over. or even when i just felt like chicken-ing out ;) thanks for holding my hand through it all...

to my friends... be it in malaysia, new zealand, australia or the united states of america... thank you for hearing me out! i cannot possibly stress that enough!! all of you have heard so much about this problem... and i can't thank you guys enough for all the comfort and support you've given me!

and since he's always confused as to who i'm speaking about... yes... this includes you too, kevin. you're not in the alligator pit anymore... haven't been for a few months. and let me be the first to tell you how glad i am... cause i got my big brother back ;)

and here's a shoutout to you too jacq-jacq! you've suffered the brunt of all of this... and i am really REALLY grateful to have you as my little sister ;) i don't think i could've survived being in melbourne with you! ;)

so thanks guys! for everything ;) for fighting for me when i didn't have the strength to fight for myself. and for consoling me when i indulged in my self pity. but most of all...

thanks for being around... and never being afraid to remind me of that ;D

owh boy... think i'm in trouble...

2007-09-30T19:32:00.000+10:00

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!

FOUR DAYS!!!

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

like a couple of albums, a heroes episode, 2 las vegas episodes and the teen movie superbad...

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...

because the moon was perfect...

2007-09-29T02:08:00.000+10:00

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...

right... so...

2007-09-21T12:28:00.000+10:00

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...

they're either high-rise jeans... and extremely baggy... so when i wear it out i look like something out of an mc hammer video... (and that's the pair i've been wearing out almost every day... so now the hem-lines are completely torn out!)

like the pair of khakis i'm wearing now... suffer from a chronic case of singkat-ness. which in literal translation means whenever i sit down... i look like urcle! they are so short that i can see my legs and ankle socks!

sigh...

;)

only when absolutely necessary...

2007-09-21T03:07:00.000+10:00

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!

spreading the laughter!

2007-09-18T14:33:00.001+10:00

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!

buses, trains and broken hearts

2007-09-14T00:10:00.000+10:00

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!

the things we get away with...

2007-09-08T21:16:00.000+10:00

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...

AND YOU SAW THIS!

wouldn't you just feel all that much better?

of course you would :D

as per mom's request, i had to succumb to a visit to the doctor's yesterday afternoon. a family friend managed to get me in contact with a general practitioner on chapel street - a massive plus considering i don't have a car! ;p but as i sat on the tram as it travelled down my street, i saw a large poster hanging outside the jam factory (and for those of you who've never heard of it... no... it doesn't actually manufacture jam). according to its bright neon colours, the two teenage leads of the upcoming movie 'hairspray' were going to be walking the red carpet at 6pm. kevin called to 'check if i had a pulse' as i waited at the clinic, and insisted that i go!

now as the thought of zac efron gracing the streets of chapel and relatively consuming the same air as me tempted me throught my medical visit, i was pretty resolved that i wouldn't let my 'groupie' gene show and stay home to do my assignment as i was supposed to. but as i called on mom to share the shocking news... all she had to say was "it's ZAC EFRON! why are you even thinking about this?! take all your medication... put on a white t-shirt and go wait there an hour early with a marker!" and as i highlighted how kiasu that statement was... mom said to me in the calmest, most serious voice that she could muster "sayang... it's zac efron. you're allowed to be kiasu" ;) and in the words of kevin "you gotta obey your mom now don't you?!" ;p

and so i did! despite my upset stomach, i put on my jay jays polka dot dress over a white t-shirt and tights and ballet slippers and trecked the 15 minutes to the jam factory. before leaving the house i called jacq up to ask if she wanted to join me in being zac efron's stalker for the day :) after a little persuasion - and proving just why she's one of my best friends over here - she agreed to ;p as i waited for jacq to come over from the city, i called up berlin to see if she wanted to come too. to prove that we were definitely educated in the same place... berlin told me she was already there! hehehe...

we waited a couple of hours by the barricaded red carpet before nikki blonsky and zac efron arrived. the crowd went INSANE! as nikki made her way to our side of the crowd, we managed to hold out our books and i got her autograph!!!! but as the noise proved... there was only one person everyone wanted to see.

and he wasn't very far behind her. dressed in a black suit, white shirt and blue tie, zac efron walked the carpet to the background music of hectic screams. security covered him tighter than anyone else... and for good reson! unfortunately, the security team covered us as he approached :( nevertheless, we got some really good pics and videos of him... enough to get us to drool anyway ;p

me and jacq ripped a couple of posters off the sides and left for dinner... agreeing that the night was worthy of another note in the book of random things we've done since coming to melbourne ;p with the boys off attending the dentistry ball at crown, me and jacq figured it was about time we had a girly night out without the boys around to aggrevate us ;p though kevin managed to squeeze in a phonecall on the way to ask how hot zac was in person... (you sad child!) we went for groceries and settled for a malaysian dinner on toorak road before jacq headed home for the night.

as for now... i've got to literally pull a 2000 word essay out of my ass (or atleast half of it) by tonight because tomorrow...

PROM SHOPPING!

*not for me!*

note to jacqueline sim: if you weren't you... i would make such a fuss about you wanting to wake me up at 8.30am on a SUNDAY! so if i'm grumpy... be warned! ;)

monumental... but for all the wrong reasons...

2007-09-06T12:35:00.000+10:00

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...

two days in one

2007-09-05T22:38:00.000+10:00

every two weeks i have to be up by 6.15am on wednesday mornings. any later and i'll be the the epitomy of stress and misery for the hours that follow till 11am.

that's cause every two weeks, i have to attend a 3 hour chem prac that contributes to to 30% of my overall chemistry grade. and today was no exception.

as usual i walked into room L1.15 at deakin's faculty of science and technology and took at seat at my usual table in the middle of the lab. to join me, as they have for the last two sessions, were jess, inna and alyssa. and as today's experiment seemed simple enough, we found something else to occupy our time ;D

unlike previous weeks, we were told to work as a table today. this meant that everyone contributed to the same experiment, leaving no one off to suffer alone. as the order of the day saw us using a multitude of equipment and many MANY vials of liquid, it wasn't long before we realised something rather spectacular.

as each flask corresponded to solutions of different pHs and spectophotometric absorbances, they also had a diverse range of colours. with our facilitator's back turned... we only did what any other bunch of bored first years would do...

pretty ain't it?

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...

apparently... i'm retarded...

2007-09-04T14:12:00.000+10:00

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

trinity college awards ceremony

2007-09-01T14:29:00.000+10:00

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 ;)

happy merdeka... happy birthday... and happy happy days ;)

2007-08-31T23:32:00.000+10:00

i think it's about time this blog hosted something other than doom and despair. and like the title suggests... i have a list of 'happy' things to share ;)

today is august 31st. on this day in 1957, malaysia reached its independence. and though it has probably taken me the experience of having to leave home to truly appreciate malaysia as an amazing place to grow up, i was not spared today from joining all my fellow home-leavers in being proud that we'd reached 50. unfortunately i couldn't participate in the pre-merdeka celeberations that took place in the city last night - what with the horrendous presentation i had to prep for this morning! - but as i sat on the tram riding back home from school today, i realised just what a big deal today was! i mean... FIFTY YEARS! all those people who fought for us back when we didn't have the strength to fight for ourselves... what would they say if they saw us now? we may not be perfect... we may be far from ideal... but we've reached our fiftieth year of independence all on our own...

so here's a big happy merdeka for everyone who calls malaysia home! and a big happy birthday for the tiny country who was willing to defy them all ;)

speaking of birthdays...

yesterday was my cousin sarah's 17th birthday. and the day before that... was my uncle eh's 55th birthday. so as you can see... august is a rather terrible time to be away :( hehehe... but on a lighter note... sarah was taken for a trip around the world with her parents in time for her birthday, and uncle eh was treated to an amazing barbeque at our new place. so to two of the most colourful people in my family... here's a huge HAPPY BIRTHDAY and lots of hugs to go with it.

to uncle eh... i know you're enjoying yourself beating me at online scrabble... but i'm pretty sure there's a catch i'm not seeing... and that when i DO... you and man are going down!! hehehe ;) hope the barbeque was as good as it sounded... and i'm missing your great big hugs to death! ;D

to little sarah... don't think i can call you that anymore, huh? i can't believe you turned SEVENTEEN already! gone are the days of you being the tiny, coconut-ponytailed little girl, and me being the annoying, overbearing and ridiculously loud older one....

wait...

hehehehe... things on the erratic capital front have been pretty good too. the weather's been brutal, but apart from that the days have been great. last night i attended the trinity college awards ceremony, to which i was the proud guest of mark tan, jacqueline sim, kevin tan and wong ai-lynn as the school acknowledged their academic excellence. it was a true honour standing back in buzzard theatre after all these months, as i watched some of my closest friends walk up one by one. and eventhough i mildly resented the fact that i couldn't be up there with them due to the altered state of mind which i occupied from february till december of last year... not a moment passed that i wasn't extremely proud of them all ;) so much so, that mark thought i needed to take a 'parent survey' slip instead of a student one (go die lah you... i know you were glad i was there! who else were you going to fight with?!).

there will be more on last night's awards and the dinner with berlin that followed... really soon when i get the pictures back from mark ;D so in the mean time... have a good weekend everyone! (jacq: don't overdo the studying... you'll be fine! i'll see you when the test's over... for both of us ;p)

my month...

2007-08-28T12:57:00.000+10:00

i've had the most hectic month. never did i believe it possible to feel as much or to struggle as much as i have in the last 30 days. granted, to compare my pain with that of those who surround themselves with utter chaos and true suffering would be nothing short of a crime... buta pinprick is still a pinprick. it may not be gunshot to the head... but it bleeds all the same ;)

academically things have been going okay. last semester yielded pretty good results, leaving me relatively confident of my hopeful transfer to melbourne uni. with that in mind, i attended the university's open day on the 19th. i don't know whether it's because i'm a uni student now... a far cry from the eager post-secondary kid that wandered the grounds last year... but the responses i got were pretty hopeful. i was told that i can look to apply sometime in october if my grades permit...

now someone in my postition - determined and ready to go with a distinction average in her back pocket - would be rather 'stoked' about all the hype and encouragement. but all i've faced with since is a barrage of decisions and conflicts about whether i should stay or move. now i can hear most of you going "what the? she's be going on and on and on about moving to melbourne uni and about how much deakin isn't the right fit... why is she backing out now?!"

it's because lately i've learned that there is a higher order in life than that which we occupy. and no... i haven't joined a religious sect or reinforced my faith (though i know i should!) since writing last and i'm not referring to any religious references either. i'm talking about life in general. about how sometimes you get so caught up in the things that YOU want... you forget that there are people and environments around you that depend on the choices you make. by moving to melbourne uni i'll be leaving the security of deakin behind. i've made friends at that school who have no idea that i've been planning to leave all this while. some will undoubtedly take it as a betrayal... whilst i look to others and be saddened by the fact that i won't have the time to build proper friendships with them all. i leave deakin for an environment that is definitely more challenging. more demanding. can i keep my head above water over there? but then... why move why i'm doing laps already where i am? BUT THEN... i acknowledge how much deakin has relaxed me... and no matter how great or comfortable the uni looks, this is an attitude that i can't continue. i've lost the drive. i've lost the rhythm of it all. and i'm the works of getting it back... but... is it too late? have i slipped so far down the chain this semester, that all because i was trying to fit in and have fun... i've already let my future at melbourne uni go?!

and as we progress past the academic confusion that currently occupies my headspace ;)
my social life has been nothing but a rollercoaster. to name names would be unfair, but those of you who know me best know of the people to which i refer. there were moments where i absolutely loved where i was at, happy and free and feeling for the first time that i was actually wanted. and at other times, i felt degraded... not by others but by myself... for having allowed them to take me for granted and for putting up with it for so long. for a person who holds so much standards and ideals about life and relationships, i can't believe i'd subjective myself to all that. for not taking a hint when i should have... and most of all... for not returning the hint back!

so i can honestly say... that after 18 months of pining for a boy who wouldn't love me back and struggling for a school that wouldn't take me... i have let everything go and have started all over again ;) i know what i want in life and i'm gonna make damn sure that everything is going to be okay. i've come to realise what's important in life... my family and the friends that surround me... the future i chart for myself... and the lives i can touch on the way ;)

with that in mind... here are the pictures i promised :D

gwen stefani's concert at rod laver arena (thanks to berlin and uncle lawrence for bringing me!!)

road trip to mount dandenong for berlin's 18th birthday:

have a great week everybody! hug hug ;)

it took me a while... but here it is ;)

2007-08-26T23:38:00.000+10:00

finding a replacement for my old skin took ALOT longer than i previously thought... but here it is guys... a new look for a new start ;)

unfortunately, it's too late for me to be typing up a post right now. i've stayed home this weekend to apparently catch up on work... but all i've done so far is catch up on laundry ;p so i'm going to attempt to atleast salvage whatever is left of my weekend with a little late night chemistry reading.

but over the next few days, expect pictures from my mount dandenong road trip and other little bits i've collected over the last month...

have a great monday guys! (if that's even remotely possible ;p)

hug hug!
yana-

hang on!

2007-08-08T17:25:00.000+10:00

don't worry people (yes... by people i mean you too jacqui ;D)... updates are coming soon!

but before i attempt to post up words and pictures from the latest goings on in the high-octane life of me...

I'M LOOKING FOR A NEW BLOG SKIN!

this skin has served me well... and i'm honestly saddened by the notion of parting with it. but a change is due and way too many people have complained about not being able to read the stuff i put up!

so the next time you see an update... expect to see a kick-ass background to go with it :D

hug hug!

.my week.

2007-07-29T02:52:00.000+10:00

not bothering with the catchy titles now ;) it's close to 3 am, and all i wanna do is upload those pictures i promised, curl up with my copy of harry potter and go to bed :D

max's return from the cattery:

i picked max up from her 3 week stay at the cattery on the 16th. from what i'd been told, the since knighted 'mad max' had been causing quite a commotion at toorak road's village vet, leaving minders with messy cages and poking the random vet in the eye whenever they cared for a cat in neighbouring cages. but apart from my elation at being reunited with her, something rather amusing caught my eye...

to tell the carriers apart, each had to be labeled with the pets' name...

she really is my baby huh? ;)

by the time i got her home, her possible indifference started to worry me. what if her habits had changed? what if she forgot all the little tricks i've taught her over the months? what if she forgets who i am?!

it took max a total of 10 minutes to re-accustom herself to the house. she did one lap of my bedroom, the living and dining room, kitchen and bathroom and realised that she was back where she started. before long her tricks had resurfaced and her affinity for attention had reared too ;p

mark's nineteenth birthday:

mark tan shi sheng turned nineteen on july 24th 2007. resuming our usual birthday planning duties, me, jacq, kevin and joel contemplated ways in which WE could comemorate mark's increase in age ;p for as jacq explained "it's his birthday... so he has to do what we want to do". well put jacq jacq... well put ;) (i swear all my teachings are rubbing off on her!)

but as he forsaw this threat in his safety, mark asked that we keep celebrations at a minimal this year, opting to have a simple dinner on the night of his birthday after everyone had ended class. placating the now 'old man' of his concerns, a steamboat dinner was planned at my house on tuesday night. kevin, jacq and lee brought the birthday boy to chapel street, packed with enough food to feed a small army ;) it's was lee's first time at my house, so extensive cleaning was needed in preparation for their arrival. it thankfully paid off, however, with jacq approving my current code of cleanliness (if only you saw what my place looks like on a daily basis jacq!).

mark was presented with his dockers long sleeved shirt upon arrival... in a fcuk paper bag. i had the pleasure of seeing the glint disappear in his eyes when i told him "happy birthday... here's your present... and we love you... but we didn't get you anything from fcuk" ;) (what?! HE taught me the methods of being evil... i wa just returning the favour! hehehe).

the dinner was great. the food was good and there were plenty of laughs to go around. lee and mark are an absolute riot when placed together in the same room. with verbal fist-fights not enough over the dinner table, the boys let the ps2 do the rest of the talking. it was close to midnight before the controllers were pried out of their hands and peace was restored oncemore ;D i don't think i've heard the word 'gundu' or 'idiot' being shouted so much over a game of justice league in my life :)

but with ALL the cameras out of commision, our phones were left with the duty of capturing the night's moments. this in itself... should have been our reason to NOT try... ;)

strike one

strike two

strike three

strike four

strike five

but it didn't take long for the fatigue of university in its first week to catch up with the boys...

mark's surprise visit:

sticking to jacq's definition of a birthday, mark was still due to recieve 'punishment' for making us oblige by his platonic birthday wish. so on top of the dinner on tuesday, it was decided that an ambush be planned for the following saturday ;)

after class yesterday, i came home, sorted out max, packed my bag and left for the city. having decided to spend the night on jacq's couch, i pretty much had the entire night to sort out the plans for the visit to mark's. at 5.45pm i met up with jacq and kevin outside their apartments before going to safeway to buy the gorceries needed for the cake we were baking. jacq had borrowed a book on chocolate and gave it to the supposed authority on all things chocolate (me) to decide on which cake to bake.

taking a page out of mark's orange yogurt conspiracy, we settled on a chocolate yogurt cake ;) with sam needing to study, we occupied kevin's apartment to bake the cake instead. it took us close to 5 hours! kevin's older brother edwin provided the entertainment, as he played a soccer game on the ps2. with his team taking beating, edwin was VERY expressive in his displeasure. even opting to turn off the music that was playing so he could 'concentrate' ;) and it worked! cause his team ended up in the final!

then the ps2 crashed! without him having saved it!! the poor boy was beside himself! when we asked kevin whether we should freeze the cake to set the icing, edwin yelped from the living room "NOBODY SAY FREEZE!" as he stared at the unmoving screen. it was so funny, but we felt bad for him nonetheless... (just in case you were wondering... kevin's the youngest ;p)

our finished product ;) not bad for 5 hours huh?

it was close to midnight when we left kevin's. and close to 3am before me and jacq finally went to bed. we were up by 8am this morning, and in mark's lobby by 9.30. the plan was to get me to call mark before i left jacq's to say that i had come to the city early to get groceries, and left my keys in the apartment. to make things worse, jacq was supposed to have gone out and the caretaker would take no less than 2 hours to break me in. so *drumroll* he had to open the door and let me in.

me and jacq waiting for the damn cake to bake!

but since plans never really go as we want them to, mark didn't pick up the phone when i called. we decided to walk to his place anyway. when i got to the lobby and dialed him on the intercom... he didn't pick up either. and here we were, four kids (joel, kevin, me and jacq) sitting in the lobby with a cake. finally, after 3 attempts, mark's sister claire responded and woke up her younger brother. and let's just say... her younger brother was NOT happy. i used the excuse that i needed his help so he had to let me up... but i could've sworn... that in that second... if i was REALLY in need of his help... he would be glad to leave me dead by the side of the road ;)

he wasn't too warm and fuzzy when he found out what was really going on, but he was all smiles and cracking jokes within minutes. it was nice being able to all be there for him. for all he wanted this year was for everything to go back to the way they were... with everyone there. even if we were all sleep deprived, it was within our stupors that a few 'i miss this' and 'i miss you's were traded ;) and THAT was nice :D th cake was half eaten by the time we left (though mostly by the people who baked it) and i got home to a thank you message on my phone that was worth all the effort ;D

taking a step back...

2007-07-26T09:15:00.000+10:00

people have been hounding me for updates... and for good reason! my blog hasn't remained this innactive in ages. it somehow seems that a lack of things to say is something my diligent readers have never had to worry about in regards to me ;p

but things have just been way too hectic! what with adjusting to being back at school, putting up with max's kitty tantrums from my supposed abandonment of her three weeks previously, the significant decrease in temperature from kl to melbourne and dealing with mark's nineteenth birthday... *catches her breath* to say that i've been spreading myself thin would be seriously understating it.

and don't worry... i've got some random pics from the last few weeks to share to make up for my absence. but since i only have half an hour till my next chemistry lecture (yes... next... had one at 8am and a tutorial at 11am. so now no one can accuse me of not having any chemistry... heh heh! okay bad joke... moving on...), i don't exactly have the time and resources on hand for an earth shattering post.

but i believe this must be said first.

last night i was faced with a profound moment. i've been here 17 months (and yeah... i took the time to count ;)) and i can honestly say that nothing has made me sit back in my chair and go "wow..." since i've been here. even right now as i pen my immediate thoughts down in a darkened corner at caffeine on campus, no words spring to mind to describe how i'm feeling right now. all i can say is pretty much that... wow...

saf and i have been best friends since we were 13. and yeah, it's been impossible most times to keep that promise alive as evil teachers, academic commitments and simple morals or beliefs have threatened to rip the safcamlaina gang apart (saf-cam-lai-na: safiyyah, camelia, elaine and katyana... just in case you were wondering ;) what?! we were thirteen!). and foolishly at some point since leaving home last last february, i honestly believed that after 6 years our friendship was beyond work. beyond repair. that no matter what me and cammy did - being the two overseas, and thus responsible for most of the running around - the four of us were drifting apart, with huge portions of each others lives that we were each excluded from.

but my concerns have been put to rest ;)

you are my best friend saf. and i love you to death for it. and nothing is going to change that.
just reading your post and the comments you've left me makes me miss being home with you guys even more...
i have the utmost faith in you as a person. i've known you since we were nine and i know the trusting and amazing person you've become over the years... and don't you ever doubt that ;)

2001

2007

love you lots saf ;)

hug hug...

tired and content ;)

2007-07-04T20:22:00.001+10:00

it's been almost 2 weeks since touching down on malaysian soil. to try and elaborate in words my feelings of elation with regard to coming home would be impossible. as usual i grinned uncontrollably when the chief steward announced on the plane "visitors, welcome to malaysia. malaysians... welcome home." i think that attribute of mas still remains a crucial contribution... one that their current state of financial strain shouldn't take away. because when you spend months away from home... it's the sweetest welcome you could ever hope for :D

but back to being in kl. so far it's been nothing short of awesome. the weather's been a lot to deal with (going from melbourne's 5 degrees to the scorching and humid 30-something temperature over here is not a feat i enjoy each season) but the thought of being in my own house and chilling with my family and 4 cats was well worth the heat!

speaking of houses, as many of you may already know, i'll be moving out of my kj house pretty soon. i'll be vacating the place i've called home for the past 17 years with mom and hafiz in an attempt to acquire a territory of our own ;) but unfortunately, much work still needs to be done on the house before being deemed inhabitable. so since saturday (the morning after arriving in kl) i've been making the trip to the new site practically everyday to see what i can do to help. though my artistic prowess still leaves much to be desired, i am proud to say that construction is well under way and we should be able to move in before i head back to melbourne.

now to what i've been doing since getting home... apart from helping out with the house... nothing much at all!

1. i've been able to drive my much missed matrix over the past week or so since my month-long driving ban in january.

2. my maxis handphone number - the one i've had since i was 12-years-old - was cancelled by maxis because i forgot to remind my dad to reload the pre-paid account before i got back... but just as i faced the darkened possibility of having to accept a pathetic replacement, dad's mengurating powers managed to get them back for me! wooohooo! now all i gotta do is find the time to take mom to the nearest maxis centre to sort it out (yana does the happy dance ;D )...

3. i've managed to get all my textbooks for the upcoming semester. thankfully my psychology and chemistry units have resolved to re-use last semester's texts, so the only subject i had to buy for was my latest addition of 'functional human anatomy'. and along with the catchy title, an expensive booklist came along with it. finding the first book was easy. the second book proved to be a little more elusive. after much searching... aunty margie found the only copy of my human anatomy textbook at the medical bookstore in university hospital. and for those of you who've never been there... take my word for it when i say that it prides itself on intimidation. the buildings are very elaborate, with sharply-turning corridors that lead on forever and doors that take you to some alternate universe. a bunch of wrong directions saw me wandering the hospital like a lost cause this afternoon as i searched for the store in the wrong building! but after passing multiple darkened hallways and even taking a wrong turn into the paediatric psychiatry ward... i finally got hold of my book and thankfully returned to the comfort of my car. if you wanna know what it felt like walking that hospital alone... think resident evil + pet cemetary + sixth sense... not cool :(

4. met up with hizwan and fariz for transformers the friday after it's premiere... at which point they introduced me to murni and the magnificent roti hawaii and mango special (and also the art of tiptoeing into the house at 3am ;p sorry mom...). i'll be seeing the boys again this friday when we attend cassie's birthday dinner at taman tun. which leads to more pressing issues... what am i going to wear on friday?! formal dresscodes are a little hard to follow when your suitcase contains nothing but t-shirts and shorts. looks like there will be some shopping happening in the near future ;D muahahaha... this circumstance would actually be fortunate should i be one of those girls who actually likes to shop. in the words of saf mohsin "dun say that shopping is painful yana!"

5. the 'issue' i wanted settled before leaving melbourne, i am proud to report, has been settled. it took us a while to develop the strength and the courage to say what needed to be said to each other. and eventhough we knew that the conversation was a long time coming, i don't think either one of us was willing to admit it... even at the cost of our individual sanities and happiness. we will always care about each other, but with the matter settled, we will both need some time apart to sort out the things in our life that we put on hold or took for granted or even shoved away. everything's going to be okay now... and i'm pleased to say that i haven't been this happy in a very long while ;D so yay for me! hehehe...

6. met up with my sri aman friends today. since me and cam came back to town, neither one of us have had the time to meet up with the friends we attended high school with. so with cam heading back to new zealand on friday, today was the last gathering we could all have together before saf attends her first year at the university of illinois. after picking up anya and cammy - and my textbook from university hospital - i arrived an hour late at one utama for my meeting with safiyyah and aminda. we chatted at delicious for atleast 2 hours before anya left, and we decided to walk around and look for something for me to wear on friday :D it was nice seeing everyone again... being able to reminisce about all the things we left behind in high school and as teenagers living in kl. best part of all was being able to see just how much we've all changed. how much we've all grown. but at the same how our differences have somehow still managed to keep us together as friends :)

*credit goes to saf mohsin's blog where all these pictures were originally uploaded :D

so that's been my last 2 weeks pretty much in a nutshell. let's hope the next time you hear from me, i'll be reporting from the comforts of my new room and with more stories to tell about my concluding week in kl before melbourne beckons ;)

the delayed introduction

2007-06-18T17:56:00.000+10:00

bowls of ice-cream and cookie dough later, i am pleased to say that i am highly medicated ;) though watching an episode of the korean series 'princess hours' sent tinges of annoyance and frustration down my spine, it is now back to my books and with less time to spend pondering my ridiculous fate.

but melbourne city got a taste of chaos today when tragedy struck in the cbd at 8.15 this morning. because as late night party gooers slept off their one too many beers, and hardworking commuters made their way to work, 8 gunshot rounds rung out from the corner of william street and flinders lane. after falling asleep at 2am, i was awoken by a frantic aunty margie to report that 3 people were gunned down in the city, with the shooter still at large. for the rest of the day, southbank (and along with it my suburb of south yarra) was cordened off from the rest of the city by ambulances and homicide squads. at close to 10am, the gun supposedly used in the offense was found dumped at a construction site at queen street - 2 roads parallel from where the shooting occured. the story currently stands that the shooter pulled a woman out of a cab at 8.15am by her hair, at which point he was intervened by 2 bystanders coming to the woman's aid. he then pulled out a gun, shot the woman he was assaulting AND the two men who got involved. by the time paramedics arrived, one of the men was pronounced dead. though the remaining 2 victims are said to be in stable condition, it has now been over 10 hours and no report of the shooter's apprehension has been released.

i know i'm beginning to sound like a printout from the day's paper, but when most of your friends live within a 10 block radius of where 3 people were shot in broad daylight, and with none of them diligent news watchers... you tend to want to get all the details you can ;) thankfully joe's current bout of sleep deprivation left him unconscious in southbank and jacq was too busy with her family to play nancy drew :D

and though this has absolutely nothing to do with the topic i started off talking about... something recently occured to me. over the last few months i've been raving about my roommate max... but i've never even bothered introducing her! so here's a graphic representation of the most loyal friend i could ever ask for :D

unfortunately my excitement of returning home is marred with sadness as i'll be leaving max over at the vet from this wednesday. with no one to take care of her while i head home for 3 weeks, the nearby cattery has agreed to keep an eye on her. but with all the errands i need to run before boarding the plane on friday afternoon - and not to mention the paper i have to attend on thurday AND the studying i'll be doing before then - i'll have to part with my dear roommate on wednesday afternoon, and spend the first of 2 nights in my chapel street apartment without her :(

sigh...

in the words of michael buble... let me go home!!!

2007-06-17T23:48:00.000+10:00

only two thoughts currently plague my mind.

thought A... must get a big fat HD on my next family studies exam to make up for the crappy psychology paper i had on friday.

thought B... must. get. home!!!!

over the last day or so i've been obsessing about the divine moment when i'll be able to walk through the terminal gates at klia, get in the car and drive home. just relishing in the absolute bliss of getting goodnight hugs from mom and hafiz, climbing my high-rise bunk bed and just passing out for hours with spike next to me ;) the awesome food and meeting up with friends can come later :D

and here's a little insentive why?! the view from my apartment balcony on friday morning when i woke for my exam paper...

see that remotely white coloured building in the middle? that's channel ten's headquarters. you can't even see their illuminated emblem on the roof!

the fog was so bad it didn't dissipate till atleast 10am. an 11-year-old melbourne girl was hit by a bus crossing the road to school that day because the bus driver couldn't see her through the smog! she was pinned under the bus for 30mins and sustained severe injuries to both her legs... poor little girl :(

but horrendous weather aside, things have been pretty rough around here too. despite the rollercoaster that has been my semester finals thus far, it seems to be the least of my problems. in fact, i forsee myself successfully surviving them better than i will the predicament at hand. because right now... the one thing in life that i absolutely want is at jeopardy. for it is not the question of whether i'll get it - i WILL get it - it's the matter of timing, and the possibility of being personally miserable when i get there.

for my friends and family who truly know me and have seen me struggle with this decision, know that i've finally made up my mind. to say that i am okay, completely unaffected and not in the least bit hurt... would be the largest lie i have ever told. it feels over the last few weeks like i've been stabbed over and over, thus prompting me to make up my mind in the hope that it'll just stop. it doesn't make any sense. it never has from the very beginning. it shouldn't be this hard, and i'm pretty sure if i were someone else, it wouldn't be. but i can't change the circumstance to which i've been privied. i am who i am. no one, not even myself, can change that fact...

so i want to go home. back to where life truly feels safe. where mom's hugs can gradually take away all the pain. where the food can gradually drown out all the voices. where my friends can gradually take my mind off it. and where my cats can gradually wipe away all the tears i'll be shedding soon.

i am currently pain and confusion in a nutshell ;) but i've got finals to think about and cookie dough to help medicate me... so in the words of michael buble... "i've had my run... baby i'm done... i wanna go home..."

ticking clocks. rainy days. and dreaded fates.

2007-06-12T13:18:00.000+10:00

for the first time since arriving in melbourne, i am able to describe the past week's weather in a single word.

FREEZING

depressing rains have re-commenced just in time for the dawning winter. so everyday, not only are we plagued with crazy winds... but falling rain and chilling temperateures all at the same time! thankfully i haven't left the house enough to suffer through them ;)

since mom and hafiz leaving on the 31st, i'd only ventured to vic market with aunty margie the following weekend to stock up on groceries. placating the devilish imp that visits me from time to time... i made her walk all the way from the apartment to south yarra station... then from melbourne central to vic market :D i have to hand it to her though... it may be a routine walk for me considering i make the trip atleast once a week on average... it felt like miles the first time i attempted it! but with the exception of a few huffs and puffs and questions as to whether we could take the tram back next time, we made it there and back without a hitch :D

then the lockdown period began. from 2 saturdays ago, i've spent my every waking hour at home! with my friends in melbourne uni having finally concluded their exam run, it was my turn at dear-old deakin to experience the pain of finals. once acting as self-appointed cheerleader for jacqueline sim and mark tan, as well as the occasional 'you can do it! you love this stuff! you can sleep next week!" for joel lee at rmit, it was now my turn to buckle down and make friends with solitude. to say that the past 2 weeks flew by would be a massive lie. for the first time EVER i'd experienced what it was like to study without support. true... i had auntie margie here to cater to my occasional need for chick flicks (though hers come speaking in korean ;p) and ensuring that i remember to eat on time... and i have mom and fiz cheering me on at home, i'd never studied independently before up until now.

a proudly-proclaimed back marker in sri aman, finding people to give me a hand in school (that's if i evern bothered to look for it) wasn't too daunting a task. i particularly remember anya giving me a 20-minute crash course on KH... 20 minutes before the pmr exam! and i aced it thanks to her! but yeah... that's what my schooling history has been like. always having brilliant people at arms length who's brains i can pick apart when mine runs out of battery ;) trinity was no different. with averages no less than perfect, my congregation of friends made up some of the smartest minds appointed by the college for their february intake. and though they strongly argue with me on that point... i know that THEY KNOW i'm right... as i always am ;) dun dun dun!

but yeah... it was easy going through school knowing that if a lecture passed you by and you pulled a jack sparrow on it, that there would be people you could turn to for help. this year it was an entirely different story. because now... i'm a 'mark' or a 'jacqueline' or an 'anya' for someone else. because now... with teachers who remain amazed that you want to know anything at all... and classmates who are just as lost or couldn't be bothered... whatever information i manage to grasp... isn't for me alone ;)

so yeah... i'd been devulging basic chemistry for the past week and a half. unfortunately it did nothing to relieve my nerves. in the morning i was greeted with the usual pre-exam tummy ache. the weather outside was so depressing i just wanted to curl up and die. but it was my first exam at deakin univeristy... and part of me wanted to know what they could throw at me ;) so i left 2 hours early, anticipating the worst from public transport, but for the first time since starting in february i'd arrived more than an hour early!

i walked the elevated hallway from the main campus grounds to the spot known as the 'central precint', a modernised structure built to support tutorial rooms, the ymca, cafes and of course the university gymnasium - my exam venue for the day. as i passed the glass structure and caught a glimpse of the makeshift exam hall, all i could think about was how much it looked like a cemetary! 650 white coloured chairs lined in perfect rows in a deserted auditorium... reminding me of the grounds where soldiers killed in war are laid to rest. mana tak takut?!

but all in all the paper was good. the questions weren't too earth shattering and the practise test they provided before hand proved to be extremely helpful. just one problem though...

it was raining outside with an atmospheric temperature of no more than ten degrees... BUT THEY TURNED THE AIRCONDITIONING ON! yeah i get the concept of things getting a little stuffy when almost 700 people fill a room... but it was cold outside (and i don't mean the harry connick jr and leann womack version either... cause i know you were thinking that mom ;p). the people who know me will agree that i have kindergarten handwriting. my tutor nurul used to say it was like cirles run over with a steam roller ;p and i know it helps when teachers grade your paper and everything looks presentable... but when your fingers approach frostbite and you can barely feel them whilst balancing out chemical equations... i'd like to apologise before hand to judy gordon or doug mccann... i couldn't feel my freaking fingers so excuse me if i couldn't give a rodent's behind about how neat and circular my handwriting was!

by the time the paper ended it was already dark outside. my first night walking through deakin grounds. it was kind of monumental since only melbourne uni harboured that honour in the past. so with a cup of hot chocolate, me and lauren made our way to the tram stop and back home... concluding our first semester together at deakin uni (turn off the dodgy indicator jacq!) ;D

so now it's back to studying again. psychology beckons on friday, and with less days than i had during chem to study for it... i got a lot of work cut out for me :(

till the next time i see sunlight :D

bringing it all back...

2007-06-04T17:00:00.000+10:00

before i go on about how perfect the past 3 weeks were with my family here, i'd like to share with all of you an audio miracle :)

have you ever heard a song that just sets it off for you? a song so brilliant in composition and lyrics that it triggers a wave of instant emotions and memories relating to the happiest days of your life? i know... a bit much for a 3 minute session... but this song did just that for me!

it's everything by michael buble. after having heard joel rave about it for weeks (and with my internet bandwith having been recently reinstated ;p) i decided to check it out. and though i shouldn't have doubted buble's brilliance in the first place, this song sent me dancing around the living room in my pyjamas with max :D memories of singing out loud in class or just going nuts dancing in the apartment... every time i laughed till my stomach hurt... every time i realised how amazing life was... each blessed moment that made last year great... and every moment i laughed and cheered with mom and hafiz... each came flooding back from the minute i pressed play ;)

*previous visitors would have been able to access a music player for the song... but due to some messed up problem with activex lately... you're gonna just have to take my word for it and get the song :D sorry people!

now back to my family's visit. what more can i say?

IT WAS AWESOME!

as previously reported, mom, hafiz, mak tok and kak nur arrived on the 14th at 7.30pm. having kept his promise, hizwan picked me up at 6.30 and we grabbed some kebabs before heading to the airport. though the flower-acquisition ordeal i had to endure beforehand wasn't too pleasant - with everyone between bridge road and church street staring at the awkward krumpler-slinging teenager with the huge bouquet of red roses - i was pleased with the fact that i managed to keep my annual mothers' day duty.

a large amount of hugs and screaming later, everyone laid their eyes for the first time on apartment 808 after me inhabiting it for 4 months ;) and as far as i know... no comment is always a good comment :D max was undoubtedly apart of the winning party... ever grateful at the multiplied number of people to play with! for the first time since i've moved in here... i got up each morning to the sound of people's voices and breakfast on the table. and eventhough it was annoying back in kl, having my little brother play ps2 while i was still asleep came as a welcomed relief.

home was making a house call :D and the timing could not have been more perfect...

over the next 3 weeks we did a HUGE amount of shopping, with my closet now stocked with less blacks and plenty of dresses (for some reason mom thinks being 19 means i need to start dressing more like a girl... where she got that notion from i have no idea ;p). mak tok met up with her dear friend mr. tattersalls and kak nur managed to have her first holiday away from malaysia since leaving indonesia. best part was... everyone was happy. something none of us had experienced in a long while :)

unfortunately the weather sucked! it rained everyday, thereby forcing us to stay indoors. our previously made plans to go for picnics and ride the ferris wheel at southbank were postponed to make way for the heavy daily downpour.

instead we spent our days roaming the halls of chadstone shopping mall and curling up on the couch at home watching chick flicks :D for three weeks i didn't have to take the tram to school or worry about oversleeping in the morning. because for three weeks... my family was here... and everything just seems to get better when you're family's here :D

the night before leaving, me, mom and hafiz went to the borders bookstore on chapel street near the house. as usual, hafiz ran off to the comic section and i grabbed a handful of magazines before joining him. we spent no less than an hour at borders, as mom stocked up on cookbooks and manuals for her new kniting fad ;p with no more books to read, i wandered to the section with picture books on cats. before long, the three of us were in a laughing frenzy (there was one of a REALLY FAT cat lying on its back wearing a toddler's overalls! ;D), all the while ignoring the staring glances and the limited time we had left before they had leave.

so yeah... the past few weeks have been great. auntie margie has taken over the 'babysitting' shift and will be keeping me company till i head home on the 22nd. all i have left on the to-do list for now is to study for the finals and get my freaking acceptance letter from melbourne uni...

happy listening and i hope michael buble brightens up your day as he did mine ;)

... hello mr. chemistry notes... sigh...

the epitomy of anticipation

2007-05-14T13:01:00.000+10:00

so with the birthday season finally blowing over - for atleast another week or two - things have started to settle back down. classes have approached relative normalcy and days have proceeded to pass without specific intineraries or social schedules. basically... things are starting to quiet down... often to the point when i can actually hear the neurons firing impulses in my brain ;). with jacq, ai-lynn, mark and kevin studying for tests on thursday and friday, i've been 'instructed' to stay away at all costs. apparently, none of them can concentrate when i'm in the room! ;D even if i sit quietly in a rocking stupor by some isolated corner... they can't study with me around! how sad is that? not to their credit... but to mine, being such a distraction (more like noisy court-jester ;p) that information can't register in their brains by my mere presence. i feel like the haitian guy from heroes all of a sudden... hehehe...

but hey... if me keeping to myself helps them ace their exams... then it's all good by me. those kids have bailed me out plenty a time when work got too intimidating for me (i still call mark for chemistry advice!), and since a BSc curriculum doesn't happen to entail biochemistry, pharmacology, embryology and the like... it's the least i could do. but you guys know who to call when you need help with neuroanatomy and cognition... or when the chocolate fix comes knocking! ;p

so in the mean time... been spending lots of time watching alias re-runs on my laptop, tucked in bed with scruffy and max curled into a corner, and milk and cookies within reach. call it solitary bliss ;) for 15 months i'd been dependent on the presence of others to make me happy. granted, we were all living within walking distance of each other then, but still... company was a commodity i'd gotten accustomed to having. since moving to south yarra, a day out with my friends requires extensively advanced planning.... and money in the pocket :( therefore, as a new resolution following my 19th birthday, i'm trying to be happy on my own. ;) once upon a time i used to be content sitting in a corner with a book and my ipod, caring less about the ways of the world and attempting to inflict as little emotional distress to the people around me as possible. though that reality seems like a lifetime ago, i'm gravitating back to it. mom thinks i should start reading again... so i will... and i need to start stop biting my nails again (that promise went out the door with confidence when my essays got submitted ;p).

but today is undoubtedly a celebrated one! mom, hafiz, maktok and kak nur are arriving in approximately 6 hours!!! wooohooo! for three weeks i get to hang with my family and stock up on hugs! ;) no more running up to jacq asking for one! hehehe.... i am so excited there aren't even enough words to describe it. and since i missed mothers' day yesterday with mom being in kl and me over here, i got lots to make up for. and it all starts today...

what mom doesn't know is that i'm meeting her at the airport ;) she called last night to ask whether i was and i confidently said no ;p i know how restless she gets knowing i take a cab from wherever i am to tullamarine on my own. the few times i've picked her up have been in attendance of either ridwan or mark and kevin. but tonight's a school night, and with everyone living in or close to the city, i was prepared to make the journey alone this time. to make sure mom didn't make any transportation plans without me, i called hafiz to tell him i'd be at the airport when they arrived. so eventhough mom thinks i'll be waiting for her at chapel street, i can trust hafiz to ensure she doesn't board a maxicab and leave without me... i hope... ;p

with my chemistry lecture concluding at 4pm, i'll be stopping by the first available florist to get my standard order of a dozen yellow roses to bring for mom from me and fiz. estimating that i'll be home by no later than 5.30, i've got precisely 1 hour to finish cleaning the house before hizwan picks me up to go to the airport.

now i know what you're thinking. heck, when joe found out hizwan was driving me... he said the exact same thing. "DON'T USE THE BOY!" as flattered as i am that you consider me 'cohones-ed' enough to manipulate someone in such a manner, no... i'm not intentionally exploiting hiz's driving privelages. geographically, his house is closest to mine. so when hafiz suggested i call a friend to pacify mom in the event she finds out, i figured calling hizwan would be the most practical decision. amazingly, he agreed to come! better yet, when i told him he didn't have to drive, he argued that the cab fare i'd be paying is equivalent to a 2-week full tank of gas in his car... so he offered to drive me too! see! i am completely innocent in the matter... truly a victim of circumstance! hehehehe.... but seriously, i know you hate it when i incessantly thank you... but you're awesome hizwan... thanks for helping me out the past few weeks ;) and i'm still buying you dinner... live with it!

so yeah... as usual i have a few hours to kill until my lecture at 3pm. now on to the most pressing question... WHAT DO I EAT FOR LUNCH?! so many choices... so little time... yum yum yum ;)

happy birthday saf!

2007-05-07T18:34:00.000+10:00

HAPPY 19TH BIRTHDAY SAFIYYAH MOHSIN!

for those of you who don't know it, or just choose to ignore the fact, saf mohsin is probably one the sweetest girls to ever walk the earth... and she's an ever better friend ;)

i know i've missed so many birthdays already, but i hope you have a great one! you are an amazing person and all those who know you would vouch that they feel lucky for having done so! you've been with me through so much and have never once complained or turned away and i am truly thankful for that ;)

illinois is going to be so blessed to have you and i know you're going to mark there, just as you have here with all of us ;D

you let me come to melbourne to pursue my dreams... so i'm sending you off to do the same ;)

have a great birthday saf...

and i'll see you next month ;D

love you lots!

hug hug!

.birthdays and EEGs.

2007-05-07T17:20:00.000+10:00

the past couple of days have left me pretty much sleep-deprived. though comparing myself in the contexts of joel's definition of sleep-deprivation would be a crime... still... been pretty much exhausted this week. after my event-filled monday and tuesday... i apparently missed the memo regarding the party's extention till saturday night. not that i have any complaints! hell no! my birthday this year was nothing but spectacular and i have my amazing family and friends to thank for that ;)

realising that my intended movie marathon at hoyts on wednesday would burn a massive hole in my pocket, i decided to spend the day in bed watching alias re-runs with max. and to prove i have the coolest mom in the world... i called her when i got up... which was at about 1pm ;p instead of telling me to get out of bed... she said... and i quote... "order in some food... watch lots of alias... and DO NOT under any circumstances, get out of bed before 5pm!" yes ma'am! i have an awesome mom or what?! hehehe... but my sloth mode had to be switched off by 6pm when hizwan came over and hung out for a while...

it's strange how i never noticed it before. all this while, co-existing with my friends who've made it into melbourne uni, and being the only one fighting to get back in... i never realised how incapaciting it all can be. granted, i find myself terrified and doubtful 90% of the time, but i always believed that this matter wasn't even worth discussing. it's melbourne uni by february... and that's the end of it. hizwan's a great guy and an even more capable student (though he'd argue with me on that one ;p). but in the face of all the intimidation and expectations put upon us - mostly by ourselves - the possibility of failing again... of being disappointed again... becomes all to real. it was humanising sitting on the couch with him and just talking it out, with someone who actually gets it... something i haven't been able to do in a while. it's our harvard, right hizwan? and you owe me a hundred bucks if you're standing in melbourne uni 9 months from now with me! ;)

so after all that talk, we needed food ;p by 8pm we'd found a table at *drumroll*... ying thai! the infamous thai restaurant on lygon which had once become my usual hangout when i occupied the corner of grattan and cardigan street. it was so nice to be back in that part of town... almost poetic considering it was where i spent my birthday last year ;) thanks for the dinner hizwan... though you must know the only reason i didn't kick you was cause it was for my birthday! ;p deciding that we needed ice-cream too, we picked up our old friend safuraa (who is now joe's classmate! how cool is that?!), and went for some freddo's. we took some random pictures in the park before heading home at close to midnight.

thursday was a pretty slow day... classes as usual with one of my paper's being returned. though i scored above the average, it would have been SO much nicer to see a HD stamped on the front page instead of a C (which is a credit people... not the torturous mark the alphabet is usually associated with...). oh well... more trying required i suppose :(

friday was back to party mode! along with jack (kim fui), jacqueline, sam, her friends - raymond and jack chi - ken and mush, i managed to watch spiderman 3 THE DAY AFTER premiere! and how was the movie? worth the entire 2.5 hours and 11 dollars i put into it ;p plus, it was also the first time all year that i'd been in the city after midnight, thanks to a certain someone nice enough to drive me home at 2am. i've been left out of lots these past few months for living in south yarra, but for that one night i was allowed to be one of the other kids and cared less about when the trains and trams stopped running ;) talk about a perfect way to end my birthday week...

BUT WAIT!

2 hours after arriving home from the movies, jack tells me that i'm to have dinner with him and joel at 7pm the following night... their making it up to me for not being there on the night of the surprise visit. so on saturday night, me and the two boys had a great dinner at lemongrass on lygon ;) joe had to go back to work by 9, so jacqueline, sam and mark met up with me and jack at lygon park before walking to melbourne central and od-ed on more max brenner ;) jack was so interested with the sukaos that he ended up refilling the milk jar 3 times! good job jack ;) hehehe...

so yeah... my birthday ended up spanning almost a week. a week a longer than i had ever anticipated ;p and to cap it all off... my favourite lecturer was in attendence this morning... yay!

for over the past year, i've read about my best friend cammy's experiences at auckland university. in her posts, she often talks about a certain teacher by the name of colin quilter who has, even till now, influenced her and motivated her to take pride and truly love what she's doing. and in all honesty cam... i think you would've missed him if you'd gone to medical school with rory ;p hehehe. today... i realised that i have a 'colin quilter' of my own. and his name is alex mussap.

he's lectured in my introduction to psychology A lecture 3 times already, and each time he manages to get an entire theatre of close to 700 stading in applause upon conclusion. he makes topics like neuroanatomy and the study of concsiousness and brain activity so scintillating and even down-right hillarious at times, that it makes you want to just run home and pick up the textbook to start all over again! though i kicked myself for oversleeping and missing half his lecture today, i was really glad i made it for the remaining hour. it's through days like today, from classes like his, that i am made to forget about my obsession with melbourne uni.... but only for about 2 hours ;) and as always, i listened sadly as he told of all the things he plans to teach us as 2nd years. maybe i'll come back and sit in on his classes ;)

so yeah... that's my week in a REALLY LARGE nutshell ;p looking forward to mom and hafiz coming over next week and the pile of dishes i'll need to attack before then ;)

.my amazing 19th birthday.

2007-05-01T22:28:00.000+10:00

despite previous concerns and nightmares, i could not have possibly asked for a better 19th birthday. though the thought of having to spend such a significant date away from home each year tends to shroud me with mild annoyance, i realised that people only do the best they can. and this goes for birthdays too ;p

as mentioned in my last post, jacqueline had informed me of certain plans that had been made in my honour for tonight. so as i got home yesterday from school, i paced myself into cleaning the apartment that was still suffering from the post-apocalyptic essay season 2 weeks before. with no intention on vacuuming the floor or making the bed in the near future, i proceeded to the dreaded duty of dishes - being the most obvious cause of distress. but in between my cleaning and watching 'supernatural', joel came online and sent me a message... something the busy boy hadn't done in a LONG while. as we talked about my impending birthday, joe apologised for not being able to join the other kids in seeing me turn 19. my worries were confirmed, as the prospect of celebrating my birthday without him became more real. doing little to hide my annoyance... i went back to cleaning plates ;p. before long i started talking to sam, who was propped in front of her computer doing her eap assignment. naturally i decided to exploit the younger one for details regarding the plans her sister and the boys had made for me ;). though her training has proven effective and sam did little to leak out the truth, i was told that my intentions for evading harm would have to be done "quickly". ding ding ding... went alarm bell number one.

then shortly before 9pm, joe called and told me that he was visiting a friend across the street and that i needed to come down to the lobby to claim my birthday present from him. elated at the fact that i was going to be seeing him after so long, i grabbed my keys and ran into the lift without so much as a second thought. but as the lift approached the lobby... something occured to me. the building across the street was a serviced apartment... why would an enrolled rmit student be living in a serviced apartment? and what did sam mean by 'move quickly'?

as the doors opened, my heart was literally halted as multiple balloons were popped in my face. ai-lynn, jacq, mark and kevin were standing there to greet me, all the while laughing at my startled response (you people are evil... i love you guys... but you're evil!) ;p. as i hugged everyone thank you, my brain still hadn't processed the fact that joe wasn't around. a part of me though he was hiding behind a column somewhere to preserve the illusion, but ai-lynn explained that joe was at the the library working and the he wanted to make the call so i could have all my friends meeting me in the lobby... even if they weren't all physically there ;)

after being presented with a huge collage made up of messages, photos and poems and a cake box from brunneti's (always a good sign ;p), i hesitantly invited everyone back upstairs. it was ai-lynn's first visit to my new place and i kicked myself for having presented it in such horrid conditions (sorry ai-lynn! ). jacq produced a packet of balloons and proceeded to blow them up before engaging in a 'balloon fight' with mark on the couches. as i still fussed with my plates, kevin and ai-lynn lit up the cake and attempted to sing me happy birthday... eventhough it was 2 hours from midnight ;p only after blowing out the candles was it brought to my attention that jacq couldn't count... because my 19th bday cake only had 18 candles! (yes jacq... we believe your story about the one candle turning up on the floor ;p).

we settled into the living room and watched a show on sbs about human dissection, whereby donated cadavers are cut up and disembled on live television for all to see. how cool is it that after only 9 weeks into their first year, all 4 of them understood well enough to digest what was going on?! me... i didn't know they taught greek at melbourne uni... hehehe ;)

with public transport ending at close to midnight, ai-lynn, jacq, mark and kevin left at 11.30pm. towards midnight and well into the early hours of may 1st, i received phonecalls, smses and msn msgs from friends and family wishing me happy birthday. the best of all came from mom and hafiz at exactly 12am, singing me happy birthday like they would've should i have been in the room across the hall ;) to everyone who called me or messaged me to wish me a happy 19... thank you so much! i really appreciate all of you remembering and for those of you back home in kl... i miss you guys so much! we'll have a birthday repeat when i get back kay?

___________________________________________________________________

despite REALLY wanting to do otherwise, i got up today for school and attended my introduction to psychology A tutorial at 9am. after grabbing a large hot chocolate from my favourite place on campus, caffeine (where the coffee guy sees me so often he just needs to pass me my cup without even calling out my name ;p), i walked to meet katie and elyece at the 10am chemistry lecture... all the while massively high with a huge smile on my face ;) jack's mannequin was blasting in my ear... which helped too ;)

got home my 12 pm and let max out of her cage. adorably, the little one gave me a big hug when i saw her... and between that and spike's long happy birthday wish last night... my cats are awesome aren't they? ;p mom's birthday parcel arrived for me at close to 2pm. a huge bouquet of flowers, a chocolate cake and balloons! have i mentioned i have the coolest mom in the world? max may be scared of the helium balloons but i loved everything... thanks mommy ;) hope you had an 'up' day today!

chilled around in bed watching alias until 3 when mark called and told me he was locked out of the house ;p so i went down to the city and met him for max brenner till 5pm when his mom got home. despite your weird philosophies about me and the chocolate heaven that is max brenner mark... you had a belgian waffle so shush! ;p called jacq in between chocolate binges and was told to come by at 6 after she got back from the gym. though mark argued i should've followed jacq... WHO THE HECK GOES TO THE GYM WILLINGLY ON THEIR BIRTHDAY?! have i mentioned that boy is trying to kill me?

killed time at borders for an hour before meeting jacq and sam at their place before dinner. rather intimidatingly i watched as the two sisters studied for their exams... simultaneously! all i could do was sit in the corner between them and wonder how they've both managed to stay sane amidst the amount of prodogical talent that runs in that house! pass some brain cells to me please people!

but the nicest part of the night came when we met joel for dinner at universal. the three of us haven't been there since joe's birthday the year before and it was the first time we'd all seen each other in over a month. it's the first time i saw his newly shaven head! looks good on you joe... never thought i'd admit it but it does... who knew that crash bandicoot would adapt well as an 8 ball? ;p hehehe. but yeah... joe, jacq, me and sam indulged in an awesome italian dinner before walking the corner and heading home.

so yeah... i am now officially nineteen-years-old. eighteen was an amazing year. i learned so much and experienced so many firsts that i'm truly going to miss the security of it all. but if the past day is any indication of how the year is gonna be... everything is going to be awesome! i have an amazing family and terrific friends who i wouldn't trade for the world! and at 19... i can say that's pretty good;)

may 1st 2007!

2007-05-01T12:14:00.000+10:00

it's my birthday today!!

woohoo!

time for another candle...

2007-04-30T13:20:00.000+10:00

i'm going to try and remain as composed as possible whilst delivering this message...

MY BIRTHDAY IS TOMORROW!!!

as of 3.18am tomorrow morning, i will officially leave behind the comforts of my 18th year and cross over into the unknown realm that is being 19-years-old. am i looking forward to adding another candle to my brithday cake (or as some would say, another step towards the grave ;p)? hell no! but am i looking forward to the bundles of presents, fairy dust, trimmings and all things nice that come with being the birthday girl? hell yes! ;)

though the day would be absolutely perfect should mom and hafiz be here with me, it's all good cause they'll be joining me on the 14th for 3 weeks! woohoo! it's been a while since the three of us just hung out and laughed without the worry of work or school bearing upon us. we are in desperate need of this time away and i'm so looking forward to seeing them in a couple of weeks.

that having been said, the absence of my family haven't put a halt in party plans amongst my friends here in melbourne. got my first birthday wish from diana, who was half asleep and cross-wired when she sms-ed me at precisely 12am last night to wish me a happy 19. her intentions were sweet... but i'm beginning to think that too many chemistry worksheets is getting to her ;p i also got my first present from katie today! i was so surprised when she sprung it on me on the way to tutorial this morning. a box of chocolates, bracelets and a cute birthday card ;) see... i LOVE birthdays!! especially mine ;D muahahaha....

but the main cause for excitement undoubtedly happens tomorrow. after a month of silence, jacqueline finally devulged to me yesterday afternoon that plans have been made for me for my birthday tomorrow night. why do i hear the 'psycho' soundtrack playing in the background all of a sudden? ;p i think the most terrifying thing a girl can ever be told the day before her birthday, when asked what the plans are, is 'not to worry. everything's been taken care of.' good God, when i heard jacq mutter those words, i could've sworn i saw a forked tail swing from behind her! because despite my obvious excitement... i am REALLY terrified! ;p there are just way too many variables adding to my birthday. the last 2 birthdays we planned (joel's in november and jacq's in march), included me in the planning and lots of sneaking around. often for weeks before the birthday without the respective age-turner's knowledge. so the fact that i'm being left out of the decision making is making me rather anxious. who knows how long it's been since planning has commenced and what's been concocted from the congregation of some of the smartest minds i know?! throw mark and kevin into the mix and things may even turn violent for me! uh oh...

regardless... let me reiterate this important fact

MY BIRTHDAY IS TOMORROW!!!

whatever my friends have planned for me... i can't wait ;) and though it really saddens me that my best friend joel can't make it due to a presentation the next day, his promise that he'll make it up to me is just gonna have to suffice for now :( all of us haven't been together in so long that i'm just looking forward to all of us being together. cause at the end of the day... that would be the greatest present of all... being with the people i care about on my 19th birthday...

though any additional presents are VERY much welcomed ;)

currently...

2007-04-26T11:45:00.000+10:00

it is precisely 5 days till my 19th birthday...

10 minutes to my next lecture...

and i am sitting in my campus's internet cafe...

FREEZING MY BEJEEZES OFF!

23 degrees my ass...

mr. weatherman needs to be shot...

why is it so cold today?!

quick stop.

2007-04-20T11:56:00.000+10:00

okay... it's precisely 4 minutes till my next lecutre... which is across the hall... so i'll make this quick.
just wanted to share my random moment of the week.

but i'd have to start from the very beginning. and this beginning occured sometime between 1992 and 1993. as most of you probably know, i started pre-school at the insanely young age of 2. when i was 3 or 4 (cause all the NORMAL kids were starting school now)... i'd made my first batch of close friends. the closest one was an adorable chinese boy by the name of jien.

according to mom, i couldn't stop raving about him (though i don't quite remember ;p) and practically assigned myself to everything jien was doing. when i abolished seri manja's uniform dresscode, jien followed. toddlers in crime ;)

anyway... long story short, jien and i went separate ways after that... he attending primary and secondary schools in his neighbourhood of bangsar, whilst i was off in kt and sri aman. in form 3, my classmate adlyss - a girl from bangsar herself - tells us of her boyfriend. a boy named jien ;)

ladies and gentlemen... bring us to 2007... some 13 since i last spoke or saw my pre-school buddy. out of boredom last week i browsed to adlyss's friend-list on friendster and decided to add jien to my list... acting on the assumption that he probably didn't posses an horrid memories of me as a girly/prissy 3 yr old. miraculously... HE DID!

last night we chatted on msn for the first time since we were both 6 years old. it's so cool how we've both changed so much and yet remained exactly the same. worse yet... jien said i used to tell his mom that we were going to get married when we were older! now i'll give all my friends who know me a second or two to digest that piece of information...

glad you met this version of me?

.mojos at work.

2007-04-19T10:06:00.000+10:00

first off i'd like to give a HUGE thank you to my cousin over in egypt, who's so graciously given me a 'thinking blog award'. never did i think my writings were anything more, to anyone, than just random ramblings of my bipolar self ;p but thank you nonetheless for showing me that this blog possesses more meaning and purpose than just that of a venting station ;p (and the fact that i worry you're 35-yr-old brain scares me! ;p)

anyway... back to my cosmic intervention of a day...

put simply, my day hasn't ended! i seemed to have overestimated my ability to write my final 'family studies' essay and ended up pulling an all nighter... LITERALLY! you know how people always SAY they pulled an all nighter, but in truth managed to sneak an hour or two of sleeps in it. well ladies and gentlemen, i'm running on pure sugar right now. i sat at the comp when the sun was still up. then the sun went down. and before i knew it the sun was back up again ;p so i dragged myself off the dining room chair that had by 6 this morning become an attachment to my posterior region, and threw myself into the shower for school.

let me say now, that in all my years of dabbling in the complex and twisted world of bullshit writing... the essay i conjured up last night was probably one of the worst. to describe the many levels to which i'm disappointed with that essay would take another assignment... but time had done it's magic and i just couldn't string words together to form sophisticated enough sentences for tertiary comprehension. basically it sounded like a kid from kindergarten stole my assignment and started drooling on it! sigh... but hopefully the mojos will be on my side with this one (and the one i submitted yesterday!) and bless me with a presentable enough grade to walk through the golden gates at melbourne uni (though i can just hear jacq and mark asking me to take that sentence back ;p)

ANYWAY....

yeah... as i was saying, the mojos were on massive overdrive today. after 2 weeks of abstaining from my horrendous nail-biting habit, last night's anxiety put me back at square one all over again :( in fact, more like square minus 2... i went on a rampage yesterday! so bad that typing this post right now is causing my mildly bleeding fingers some pain :( the whole time i was like... what are you doing?! stop it! so there's hope for me yet i think :D... THAT was sign number one!

after rushing out of the house, i attempted to make my daily jay-walking routine to the tram stop on the other side of the road. as usual, i looked left to see how far away my tram was. but today, what did i see? fire engines... 3 of them. and a police car. sirens going off everywhere. one of the power cables hanging overhead for the trams to hook on to had dislodged... RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY APARTMENT. desperately i continued to stare down my oncoming tram, hoping that it would disregard the disruption (which was in the opposite lane!) and come pick me up. instead i saw people filing out of the tram at toorak road and the tram started back the way it came. all trams running along chapel AND church streets were suspended for now.

now usually that wouldn't bother me.... except for one tiny detail... HOW THE HELL WAS I GOING TO GET TO SCHOOL?! DID I ALSO MENTION I HAD AN ASSIGNMENT THAT WAS DUE FOR SUBMISSION IN 5 HOURS?! i entertained the fleeting thought of climbing back into bed and sleeping till next week for about 3 seconds and realised that i HAD to get to burwood one way or another. so i hiked to the atm, cashed out the money i needed to buy my new monthly... hopped on the tram to south yarra train station... took the city loop train to richmond station... switched to the alamein train... got off at east richmond station... only to realise that i'd made a HUGE mistake cause the station is *drumroll* positioned on church st...i ignored all the people staring down church street for the missing tram, and i walked from the corner of church and swan street to bridge road.... got on the vermont south tram and arrived on campus 15 minutes after my first lecture ended.

mojos in cosmic sync or what?!

hehehe... well one cup of yougurt and a chocolate and blueberry muffin later, i'm sitting in deakin's internet cafe killing the 3 hours i have till my next class. despite my disappoint at the essays i've submitted, i'm ecstatic that freedom has come knocking again till the exams in june. and with mom and hafiz coming in about a month, things are looking up ;) it's like mom says... when you fall right to the bottom... the only place you have left to go is up anyway ;p

till my next post... have fun like it's your last day on earth... and eat enough chocolate to make you WISH it was :D

hug hug everybody!

birthday shoutout!

2007-04-13T10:43:00.000+10:00

HAPPY 18TH BIRTHDAY JACQUI KONG HUIYI!

michelle, jacqui, ce-yan and me
(pictures of us need to be seriously updated!)

one of my best friends in the whole world and co-founder of 'sloth land' turns 18-years-old today!

jacq, you've been like a little sister to me for the longest time.

and all the people who've ever been lucky enough to know you will agree with me when i say that you have got the most amazing heart!

you care more than most people about those around you and you take pride in the things that you do. you bring out the best in people, because with you... being fake isn't an option.

you make people proud of who they are, regardless of all the competition and superficiality in the world.

you laugh in the face of all things messed-up and challenge those who ask you to change! (hey... milo was out of commision after gilmore girls but you still loved him ;p now he's a superhero!)

and most of all...

jacqui kong is real.

she isn't worried about what others think of her

what others don't think of her

she lives life every single day the way she wants it to be lived

and despite all the terrible things that you've been through in life... looking at jacq gives you hope.

hope that at the end of the day, even if all dreams crumble right before you, you know you're going to be okay.

cause at the end of that day... jacq will still be right there.

with all the faith in the world ;)

Happy 18th Birthday Jacqui!

wish i could be there ;)

.ramdom.

2007-04-10T17:06:00.000+10:00

it's been my source of comfort and security for almost 10 years... but i'm putting an end to it right now!

i've decided to stop biting my nails ;)

for those of you of don't know me very well... you may be wondering why such a feat deserves blogging recognition, but for my dear family and friends back in kl and here in melbourne... this set of news comes as a MUCH welcomed relief!

i've tried to stop multiple times, but each effort was hampered by an overload of stress or just the absence of someone to remind me of my latest conquest. last year i promised myself that melbourne uni would be my deciding factor. if i got in... i'd stop cold turkey ;) mark helped, always pulling my hand away whenever he caught me attemping to bite away whatever is left of my pitiful cuticles. but plans were diverted and i ended up NOT going to melbourne uni and NOT having mark around everyday to remind me. so i said... what the hell? i get another year to enjoy this nasty habit before putting a stop to it.

however, it's gone 4 months into the new year and i think a re-vamp of the old promise is in order. you see... back when i was 15... i painted all my nails with black nail polish over the december holidays. and miraculously, after having tired EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD to try and stop, i actually did! my nails grew back and i was almost certain that i'd stopped the habit for good. unfortunately, since it was against the rules to have your nails painted back in sri aman, the nail polish came off by january... and so was my new reform. with a vengeance, i was back to nail-biting and haven't come up for air since.

i'll be 19 in about three weeks... but over the past year, i've experienced more than i ever did over over that span of time. i got sick and hospitalised for the first time in recollective memory... okay second time, but the first time doesn't count cause i was only in there for a day ;p anyway... that entire event, being hooked up to machines and having tubes run in and out of everywhere, it got me thinking about just how fragile human beings really are. i mean... i was never the sick one. i had the occasionaly flu and fever, but even with the most serious of diseases, i was let off alot sooner than most. and not to say that that isn't a cause for gratitude, but you sometimes take it for granted. you put yourself in harm's way - deliberately - because you think that your track record allows for such cockyness. but the truth is... EVERYONE gets hit with fate and bad luck, and especially mortality atleast once in their lifetime.

being in the hospital humanised me. i was in there for something that my family considered me too young to have. but hey... i was there anyway. and i am not eager to invite fate and trouble into my company in the near future!

so as i look down at my horribly affected fingers, and contemplate of how much bigger an invitation i could possibly be throwing the-powers-that-be to mess me up again, i say enough! i've painted my nails black again, and with uni not giving me a hard time about anything other than grades, i forsee a great outcome ;)

it's been 5 days since i last tried... and my friends over here are jumping for joy. i even got a clap from mark yesterday :D but yeah... i've decided to stop biting my nails!

i chose normal ;D

belated shoutout...

2007-04-07T16:47:00.000+10:00

to the oldest member of safcamlaina... elaine lam sue ching...

HAPPY BELATED 19TH BIRTHDAY!!!

i am a terrible friend to have not contacted you on your birthday, and i have no excuse for it!

other than to blame...

1. the damned friendster gods for not sending me a reminder!

2. my stupid sim card for erasing all my calendar markers with my new phone!

3. haley joel osment for having his birthday near yours thereby often causing me to get the dates mixed up!

see... no excuse ;)

regardless... i hope your birthday was an awesome one... and the bunch of us will have a re-do when i get back kay? hug hug!!

important announcement...

2007-04-05T09:14:00.000+10:00

i'm messed-up... live with it!

why? not happy? ;p

ramdom fact... there's a giant elephant sitting on my head... again...

the big night for the little sister...

2007-03-22T16:18:00.000+11:00

as you guys may have already been informed... a few of us were left with an unyeilding and unforgiving hangover this morning, courtesy of our night out yesterday. however, before i attempt to describe the random-ness that was jacqueline sim's 18th birthday dinner, i would like to reinforce for the safety and betterment of my fellow trouble-makers that there was NO ALCOHOL INVOLVED last night! not even in the food! ;D

now that that's over with... yes... march 21st 2007 marked little jacq-jacq's cross-over into the world of legality. an event, no doubt, she'd been dreading since the first day i met her ;) whilst most of us would relish in the fact that being 18 comes not without its perks, all jacq ever saw was another year closer to the grave ;p or as she says "don't remind me leh! i feel so old!"... ignoring the fact that, with the exception of ai-lynn, all of us were born in the year BEFORE her. so yeah jacq... if you're old... consider the rest of us beyond the point of decomposition ;)

being the only one with wednesdays off... and no exam or large homework pile to deal with... i spent the better part of the last 2 weeks trying to orchestrate jacq-jacq's birthday dinner. having talked it through with joel earlier in the month, we'd decided that a nice, fancy dinner would be the way to go for our little sister. and when you're in melbourne... no place spells the words 'nice' and 'fancy' better than docklands ;)

so last night, upon the completion of everyone else's classes, we met at jacq's place decked out in our best. the boys, joel and mark, exploited the limited boundaries of formal male attire and arrived in dark-coloured shirts and pants. jacq and her younger sister sam looked absolutely awesome in their girly ensembles, props to the fact that they're both size 2's! me... i'd spent close to an hour rumaging through my wardrobe and putting on the make up and curling my hair to succumb to my red dress and heels ;) (can you just see the disaster unfolding there?).

after letting the birthday girl run frantic with her birthday 'bag', the 5 of us left the apartment and proceeded to the tram stop on the corner of swanston and la trobe to catch the 8pm to docklands. see... jacq at this point still had NO IDEA where we were taking her... and so safely assumed we knew exactly where we were going. now children, what do they teach us in school happens when we assume? ;p because you know the 8pm tram to docklands... turned out there wasn't one! all trams that ran along la trobe to docklands terminates at 6.30pm ;) we found this out after joel so conveniently decide to trick jacq by telling her he 'booked' a tram and asked that the operator bring it round by 7.30 ;p (hehehe... sorry it backfired on you joe ;D).

but all was not lost in the world of 'manipulating the birthday girl whilst figuring out what to do next'! ;) we found an alternative way to docklands by stopping at southern cross station and walking along the bridge. the night was finally beginning to take shape when the inevitable happened. my flat-footed curse took hold, and by the time i stepped off the tram and into southern cross station, i was already carrying my brand new black heels and walking barefoot. for those of you who've been diligent to this blog, you'd remember my previous experience with heels on the night of trinity's prom. which ended the same way with me walking barefoot along southbank. but it was a long walk to the restaurant and i did not want to make the entire trip without shoes! despite mark's protests, i put the heels back on every few metres or so... only to aggrevate the cuts in my feet more... at which point mark proceeded to be amused ;p

joel stopped us outside this beautiful structure built along the marina edge. clear glass with bright lights and a breathtaking view of the skyline. our restaurant for the night ;D little jacq-jacq took a while to figure out that this was where we'd be having dinner and raved about how she loved the chocolate cake here. bingo! joel had the biggest smile on his face from the minute we walked through the door ;)

our twisted journey saw us having dinner at close to 9.30pm. everyone was hungry, but with a view like that... i don't think anyone really cared. it had been a while since all of us had come together and just hung out and laughed without a care in the world. granted, mark and jacq were preoccupied with their coming exams on friday, but every once and a while we managed to get a few words through and things would fall back into place again. sam has undoubtedly become a group favourite, looking and sounding exactly like her big sister, but ALOT less innocent... who knew we could find a bullying partner for jacq in her little sister? ;p

after downing the great food and chocolate cake, the girls decided to make a 'short' trip to the bathroom. sam found the cubicle doors very interesting, one of those new inventions that start off as clear glass when vacant, but switches opaque the minute the lock is turned. we spent a good 5 minutes turning the lock back and forth waving at each other ;p nostalgic of our first experience with allynna on prom night, me and jacq pulled out our camera phones and took pictures of ourselves in the mirror's reflection. where were the boys the entire time we were being vain? waiting for us in the freezing cold outside :D

the best part of the night was on the way back home. it was close to 12am and the tram stops were empty. for some reason, jacq had a barney song in her phone, and for a better reason, thought it appropriate to play it out loud while we waited for our ride. before long, me and joel were singing to it as mark begged that jacq switch it off :D the arriving tram was empty too... so we had the whole thing to ourselves! that was so cool! it was like as if the whole of melbourne has gone into hiding and we were the only ones left. made up for the fact i missed all of them so much ;)

so yeah... last night was great. despite having bandanged toes and a large case of a fatigue-induced hangover, i got to hang with my friends, proving that time and distance does very little if you're in it for the right reasons. if you're willing to make the effort too ;D

happy belated 18th birthday jacq-jacq... hope it was great one ;)

the consequence of a night out...

2007-03-22T11:21:00.000+11:00

HANGOVER

... there wasn't even any alcohol involved! and yet there's a giant elephant sitting on my head... :(

.taking time to reminisce.

2007-03-19T13:45:00.000+11:00

have you ever wondered of the effects of time? of how a day, a week, a month or even a year has changed the person that you are?

now most of us would come to our own defenses and argue that time has done absolutely nothing to our personalities and views of life. how can it? we spend our entire lives investing in those attributes - what makes us who we are and our perceptions of how the world operates. a year, a month, a week and definitely NOT a day filled with emotionally altering events is going to change that.

allow me to be the first stubborn person to say that that is a whole load of bullshit ;)

people change. we may overestimate the time it takes or the reasons that cause people to change, but ultimately people DO change. but for the same reasons we never seem to notice ourselves putting on any weight, we don't realise that we've altered who we are because we see ourselves every single day!

before you start wondering what it was that sparked my current string of ramblings... know that there's a point to all this ;)

today, i decided to take a walk down memory lane and re-read all the posts from my old blog on friendster. for those of you looking for an interesting read, you should head down over there by clicking on the link i've set up. because the girl who wrote all those entries... is someone worth knowing. someone i truly miss.

not only was her grammar and style a lot more sophisticated than the incoherent scribblings you see on this page, but her writings were sincere and at most times significant. she wrote what she felt. she wrote about things that mattered to her. and even in moments of despair and worry, she was happy and genuinely hopeful. she was thankful for every blessing she'd received in life and didn't question them. and most of all... she was proud of who she was... even if others didn't feel the same.

demented and loving it was all about hope and discovery. from the first post that i added up the night after my senior prom, right down to the concluding entry about my departure from trinity's yearbook committee, it felt like my life had a silver lining adorning every dark cloud. it was about me leaving home for the first time and adjusting into my newfound life in melbourne. and it was also about me learning to accept the deeper connections i'd formed with my friends without apprehension and doubt. i was happy.

sabotaging fate seems to me as being just that. me trying to find a flaw in nature's design of my life and challenging it. a year has changed me so much! in ways that i am not necessarily proud of. i was once driven and confident, refusing to accept second best when it came to what i wanted to do academically. and eventhough i hovered in a realm of self-destruciton all the time should things not turn out the way it should... i fought back! i was stronger then...

looking back on who i was... i find myself rather concerned. like as if, eventhough i'm alot more comfortable in my own skin now, having taking life at a slower pace... it has come at the cost of an increase in insecurity and bitterness. my non-existent social/personal life never used to bother me, rather i relished in the individuality i possessed... but now i pride myself on being cynical and banish the idea of 'eventuallies' and 'happily ever afters'.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?!

things have changed. i miss my friends more than they could possibly understand... i never thought it was possible to miss them this much with only a river separating us... but it's the truth. just under a year ago, i wrote a post about what i loved about my friends. now here's what i miss...

i miss laughing with joel. our late night conversations talking about the world and poking fun at anyone who thought any different ;) how we could just be completely silly around each other and not have any ideals or expectations of ourselves. i miss my big brother...

i miss clowing around with jacq-jacq. how i could always run down the hall and bang on her door so we could watch movies together and oogle at the cute actors. i miss not having an entire city separating us and different schools dividing us even further...

i miss talking to mark. just how the two of us could talk without the burden of the world hanging over us. without guilt or obligation, just him being his sarcastic self and me being the immature 5-year-old that i am ;) without needing a purpose for each call. i miss seeing him more than once a week...

i miss them being there...

i miss me being there...

so from demented and loving it to sabotaging fate i admit that i have changed. whether it's for the better or for the worse i don't think i'll ever know for certain. but what i do know is that it was inevitable. life forced me to grow up and change a few wires along the way. i'm not proud of some of the decisions i've made or the reactions i adopted in dealing with them, but i am glad to say i'm trying. i'm definitely not the 17-year-old girl on her way to medicine at melbourne uni anymore, but i'm the almost-19-year-old girl studying psychology at deakin... but working her ass off to be the 19-year-old medical student at melbourne uni ;)

for my friends... all i can say is that i miss you guys... so much every day. but i'm okay ;) or atleast i will be... ;D

the one thing that one year in melbourne hasn't taken away from me... i miss home! i miss my hugs from mom and hafiz and i miss my cats ;) i miss how life felt so safe and certain back in hectic kl... but that's the best part about family. you'll never lose them... no matter how hard you try ;D

so for those of you looking to take a stroll through your past, be warned! time is a tricky thing. but regardless of whether you like or hate what you see, just know that the fact we're all still standing in this crazy world...

... is an amazing feat all on its own... ;)

simple pleasures ;)

2007-03-16T16:09:00.000+11:00

my day could not have possibly started any better ;)

instead of the dreadful 6am, no sun outside, freezing cold melbourne morning that i've gotten used to on fridays, i woke up today at 9am (though officially it was more 9.30 ;p) to light actually streaming in through my window. chapel street was wet with the morning rain and miraculously there wasn't a trace of the usual harsh wind. chemistry pracs run every two weeks at deakin, as it did in trinity. so today i was faced with a MUCH later morning start and only one lecture to take up my time.

so as i fell out of bed (yes... fell...) and walked into my living room, i was greeted with the most amazing sound...

speed. unrestricted and unaltered. the almost euphoric sound of v8 engines tearing up a 12-month untouched tarmac at albert park. the sound of the australian f1 grand prix qualifying session ;) and i could hear ALL of it from my balcony!

for those of you who have never been blessed by melbourne in march, just know, it is definitely something you'd want to put on your list of things to do in life. it's like at every 3rd month into every new year, something unexplainable happens. almost like magic ;) back to back, the tourism industry is exploited as melbourne is prepared for the f1, australian open and swimming championships all at the same time. and although some may argue that all this excitement is taking a toll on the melbourne population, it's definitely a sight to see! the city comes alive and the air is numbed with the greatest sounds and even smells...

i was due to meet my mentor this morning for the first time (and it was cancelled too! told you i had a great day ;p). but as i got off the tram i was pulled into the magic as the smell of eucalyptus filled the air. i mean come on... eucalyptus! the things koala bears eat. granted, deakin is in such a remote part of victoria that eucalyptus trees are actually allowed to grow there. but seriously, even for those of you who've been in melbourne a while and have crossed paths with these trees, have you ever actually been engulfed by it? the distinct smell just overpowering the smell of rain or anything else funky around you... everytime i catch a whiff of that smell one place comes to mind. kohunu koala park. mom used to take me and hafiz to that park every time we visited perth. before long we'd memorized the track and which native animals we'd be seeing next. but the koala's were always the best. usually so high up in the trees, koalas are actually scared of being on the ground. so only the older kids of a certain height would be allowed to handle them. the first time i went, i was too little. the next time too. but the last time i went, i was tall enough and now it was hafiz waiting down on the ground. it was like the koala cages were a benchmark for us. of how much we'd grown, and how much more growing we had to do. but regardless of age and height, the smell of eucalyptus, was something that everyone took back with them ;)

i know i probably sound like someone high on those eucalyptus leaves, but it's the truth. it's amazing how one great day can make you evaluate all the great days you've had in your life. re-live them and re-enjoy them. i came home to a sink pilled with dishes and a spent 2 hour commute only to attend a one hour lecutre, but who cared?! max was jumping about and the qualifying session was still running. all i had to do was lay back on the couch... watch max chase her own tail... and hear the cars hum from one gear to the next ;)

the simple pleasures in life...

my new re-start ;)

2007-03-08T09:58:00.000+11:00

after more than a month of evading the topic of my blog... i've finally figured out what it is that's been gnawing at me about releasing a new post... i didn't want to put aside the previous entry with all the pics in it! ;p it looked so home-y opening up my sadly un-updated blog to find a barrage of colourful pictures staring unblinkingly back.

but hey... a month is WAY too long ;)

so to answer the burning question in everyone's minds... yes i am indeed still alive ;) the past weeks have been tough and i often found myself wrought with uncertainty and loss, experiencing emotions i was spared of last year in the company of my instant friends. but as i said... it's been a month. i've been made to uproot and move COMPLETELY out of my comfort zone, and said a fair share of goodbyes along the way.

i've moved to chapel street to a one bedroom apartment with LOTS more space. and to fill up that space, mom got me a kitten! a tortishell little rascal by the name of max who spends most of her days terrorizing scruffy and making mine just that much brighter ;)

and against all expectation... i'm doing great ;D

deakin was alot to get used to. standing 3 times smaller than my old campus in melbourne uni, getting used to the fact that i could walk the perimetre in under 15 minutes was already something that concerned me. as with most unis in australia, deakin came with their own foundation progam... so all the international kids i hoped to hang with on the days of orientation were already grouped in separate corners. ultimately, my first week was miserable to say the least! i had gone from having 3 lunch buddies everyday to eating lunch in the internet cafe on my own. what once was the anticipation of going into lectures knowing i'd be saved a seat by my friends no matter how late i turned up was now something i couldn't admit to. if i made it any later than 5 minutes early to a lecture, i'd be on the floor... on my own. the instability of being a BSc student, possessing one major, one minor and electives from multiple faculties left me in complete lalang mode, changing classes and classmates on an hourly basis. so yeah... my first week sucked.

you can imagine my elation when the-powers-that-be in melbourne uni told me that they may be opening their doors for a mid-year intake should i make the grade and still be interested. my response: HELL YEAH! the painful nightmare that was deakin in week 1 could have just been shortened to a bad 4-month dream, rewarded with a one-way ticket back 'home'. back to accompanied lunches and knowing exactly where i was going on campus without the risk of walking into a drain or pole somewhere (though some argue i do it anyway...). but best of all... i would be coming back to my friends. the 5 amazing souls that held my hand throughout the whole of last year... a thought that on its own rid me of every insecurity and fear about the coming months.

but as i biasedly contemplated this presented option, something occured to me. what was i really planning on busting my ass off for? was this motivation to get back into melbourne uni by july motivated by the academic aspect of it all... or was it something else? truth be told, deakin felt great. the lectures were slower and everyone was alot more laid back. and in its own little way, the campus was beautiful. yet everyday as i sat in the hr commute that takes me from home to burwood, i couldn't help but feel like i was walking into a place i didn't belong. it wasn't 'home'. and the thought of surviving it for another year petrified me. so what was it?!

duh! what else?! ignore the fact that everyone was already in different faculties, i needed to get back to melbourne uni because my friends were there. cause by going back in july, i'd be restoring the balance. no more running around trying to put everyone together, trying to preserve what once was an amazing arrangement. to put my melbourne family back together. see i always felt it was my responsibility because i was the one 'smart' enough to get booted to the freaking furthest corner of the earth. but over the last few days i've realised something else.

time and distance have taken its toll. my friends are hanging on to each other by a thread. and it has nothing to do with the fact that they aren't trying, because they are! i can even say their jobs have been made more difficult, being in the same university but just NOT able to be together. and yet here i am, jumping around like a freaking energizer bunny trying to ignore the gap and fall back in there. what once were the 6 kids from eap 3v that did everything together and killed each other's phonebills with 2 hour phonecalls each day... is still there. just not THERE. everyone is doing their best trying to swallow their new environments and courses that expecting things to be as they were was a foolish notion from the get-go.

but then what was i expected to do?! i went to class everyday waiting for the day to end so i could run home and call my friends. i'd make the trip to the city every chance i got so i could be near them and not give them an excuse to carry on without me. i was clinging on to the hope...

the reality of what we are now hit me hard. working my ass off to get back into melbourne uni by july may very well be a stupid idea. because at the end of the day, i'd be risking a much better education here at deakin... for the chance to be with my 'family', which was slowly but surely disintegrating.

so as i pondered and cried over my darkened future, i found something great. someone great.

mark tan.

my preoccupation with holding all SIX of us together forced me to overlook the one person in front of me. since recovering from the messed-up-ness that was the last 6 months, i naturally gravitated towards mark for salvation. somehow i kind of expected him to keep me at a distance, pacify me but not comfort me. mark always believed it was safer to keep people out because it saved yourself from letting any of the pain in. and to an extent i couldn'tve agreed with him more. but in those moments of loss, when i really needed someone to let me know that everything was going to be okay. that despite everything, there was going to be someone waiting for me when i got home if i needed them. mark surpassed what anyone and everyone would've expected of him and has been THAT person for me ;) (and before you start protesting mark... thanks ;) i couldn'tve survived these past weeks without you and know that i truly believe you'll be amazing at what you do and that the world will be lucky to know you ;) and i promise... no more clinging!)

granted we're both having a tough time adjusting to school and the absence of close friends in our daily routine, so we've both somewhat depended on each other to make up the difference. to know that we can both come home to someone dying to vent about their individual days is something i am truly grateful for. and mark made me realise something else... coming back to melbourne uni should be MY choice. he, along with ai-lynn, jacq, kevin and even joel in rmit will always be there waiting for me, but when i come back should and will be something i decide for ME.

so to ai-lynn, jacqueline, joel and kevin, thanks for making this transition as smooth as possible for me despite your own problems ;) to ai-lynn and jacq, i know medical school feels impossible right now, but just know that if anyone can hack it it's the two of you! to my poor sleep-deprived buddy joel, i wish i could stop time and give you more than an hour's sleep each night, but you're made for architecture joe... and you're gonna be great at it! to try and console kevin would be pointless cause he's brilliant... but for what it's worth... the drawing will get easier and you'll be better than fine, trust me ;p

that having been said... how am i doing at deakin university?

i'm doing amazing ;) i'm loving the campus more and more with each passing day and i've made a bunch of friends i can sit and chat with in lectures and tutorials. who knew my problem with making friends in the beginning was cause i didn't talk to the local kids ;p best part is, i'm who i WANT to be here. no one knows where i'm from or what i'm like academically. no one knows of my breakdown last year. no one knows of the crappy decisions i've made along the way. no one know ANYTHING! i'm just kat... the BSc psychology major trying to find her place in the world.

and i'm happier than i ever thought possible ;)

commemorating the new look ;p

2007-02-01T23:05:00.000+11:00

to go with the new look of the blog... i think that an upload of much delayed photos are in order ;D

so i present to you... ladies and gentlemen... my last 2 months of 2006 in melbourne ;)

prom:
*these are the photos i wanted but couldn't upload the first time...

-my very own lucas ;p: me and eugene lee -

-me, kevin and mark on the carriage-

-tired: mark and me-

-kevin and me on the roof-

-on the roof at sunrise: kevin, me, jacq and joel-

-jacq and joel on the roof-

-jacq, joel and me-

-group photo-

-me and jacq-

our last days at trinity:

-before and after: kaspar and mark-

-lynsey, me and jacq-

-still here ;p: jacq, me and joel-

-kaspar and joel-

-joel, mark, jacq, me and kevin-

-brother from a different mother ;p: me and joel-

-eap 3v, brought to you by the amazing pat porter!-

-from day one ;p: me and jacq-

-mark, me and kevin-

-monday morning buddies! ;p: robin, me and michael-

-mike heald (lit lecturer), me, jacq and ai-lynn-

-dream-maker ;p: me and kevin-

-michael and me-

-the six of us: ai-lynn, joel, jacq, kevin, me and mark-

graduation:

-kevin, me and mark-

-all about chemistry ;p: us with chem teachers patricia jackson and siegbert nickel with baby kaspar (and yes... by us, we mean joel too ;p)-

-vivian, jack, felix and me-

-mark, joel and kevin-

picnic at st kilda beach:

-group photo!-

-jacq and joel-

-my boys ;p: kevin, me, joel and mark-

-jacq and me-

-safest place in melbourne ;p: me and mark-

new zealand trip:

-ita, tee and me-

-my family ;p: hafiz, mom and me-

-mom and cherries! ;p-

-best friends for life ;p: mom and me-

-strawberries!: uncle mel and hafiz-

-family photo!-

-by the water: myra, me, sophie and hafiz-

-boost... yum ;p: mom, aunty mimi and me at sydney airport waiting for transit-

-another family photo-

-hafiz, mom and me... from a different angle ;p-

-with the little ones ;p: hafiz, me, myra and sophie-

so that's it people... a photographic representation of my year's curtain call. between healing from my operation three weeks ago and figuring which university to head off to this year, i'm just taking these next few days off to enjoy my last moments at home before melbourne beckons.

it's only been a month, but this year has been one hell of a rollercoaster already ;p next stop... deakin university and a much appreciated, entirely new beginning. in more ways than one ;)

stay tuned for more updates from the erratic weather capital of the world ;p

playing in my head...

2007-01-24T16:06:00.000+11:00

"I shouldn't love you but I want you. I just can't turn away. I shouldn't see you but I can't move. I can't look away...
And I don't know how to be fine when I'm not. Cause I don't know how to make this feeling stop...
Just so you know. This feeling's taking control of me. And I can't help it. I won't sit around. I can't let him win now.. Thought you should know. I've tried my best to let go of you. But I don't want to. I just gotta say it all before I go. Just so you know...
It's getting hard to be around you. There's so much I can't say. Do you want me to hide the feelings. And look the other way...
This emptiness is killing me. And I'm wondering why I've waited so long. Looking back I realise. It was always there just never spoken...
...I'm waiting here...been waiting here"

- jesse mccartney -

thank you!

2007-01-21T22:29:00.000+11:00

it seems over the last few weeks... angst has been nothing but a circulating theme for my blog. but for those of you who have remained diligent readers of it regardless... i sincerely thank you. these past 3 months have presented nothing but turmoil for me, and i REALLY appreciate you guys taking the time to read my ramblings and respond to them... thanks for being there guys ;p

mom - thanks for being your amazing self! i know i'm a massive handful (always have been ;p) and that being away from home troubles you when you know i'm sad or disturbed or depressed or all of the above (which happens alot ;p). but never once have you ever discouraged me or held me back from my dreams. thank you for hugging me all those times i needed it. thank you for kicking me in the butt all those times i needed it ;p i'm going off to university (eventhough i didn't think i would a few months ago!) because you never gave up on me. thank you for all those times you've told me i make you proud. and most of all... thank you for making ME so proud that i have an amazing mom like you to look up to ;) love you lots mommy.

hafiz - you are the best little brother any sister could ask for. you're way too young to understand why i've been crying lately, and i pray to God you will never have to go through what i did, but you still hugged me and told me, "everything's gonna be okay kakak!" and that meant the world to me! i am so proud of the person you are becoming and i want you to remember that no matter how far away i am, kakak loves you loads okay! (and don't let abang ridwan torture any of my teddy bears while i'm at school ;p)

cammy - thanks for encouraging and comforting me (all the way from auckland!) despite having experienced problems of your own. knowing that you'll always be your crazy and amazing self through all the change and distance has helped me so much :)

saf and elaine - thanks for all the smses and phonecalls you guys made to check up on me. i want you guys to know how happy i am for both of you that you guys have found stability and fun in your lives ;) hope we can hang out soon!

jacqui - thanks for the multiple (and lengthy!) talking/bashing sessions we've been having... just knowing that i have you on my cheer squad makes everything seem simpler somehow.

mark - thanks for picking up the phone everytime my number flashed by... i know it can get annoying, having me call or sms every single day, but i want you to know how much it means to me having you there. regardless. you've heard and seen me cry more than most, and have yet to pass judgement or make me feel worse. thanks for always making me laugh! hug hug, mark! ;p

joel - thanks for being my younger older brother ;p... picking up my calls and giving me someone to talk to... about everything. having you with me in the non-melbourne uni-pond (eventhough yours was entirely by choice ;p) gives me a sense of anticipation for this year. thanks for talking to me about the things we've talked about lately... thank you lots joe ;D

jacq jacq - thanks for being my source of optimism and comfort. i know you want me staying nearby and attending melbourne uni with you, but i promise you jacq-jacq i'll be seeing you lots and you won't even notice i'm gone ;)

kevin - thanks for putting up with me! we've been through our FAIR share of ups and downs over the past year, but despite everything you've continued to be there for me as best you could. i'm sorry things didn't turn out the way we wanted it to and i'm especially sorry for all the times i made you want to doubt who you are and what you were doing, but i want you to know i wouldn't trade any of our fights or 'confession games' for the world... it brought me here ;)

lee - thanks for making me your 'haley' ;) i always thought that title meant the end of me, but you've shown me that being a 'haley' comes with a massive perk - having my 'lucas' look out for me everyday. we may disagree on a lot of things, but i'm glad i can count on you to look out for everyone (you know who i mean! ;p) if i'm not around. thanks for making me smile.

for those of you who consoled me but i am yet to personally thank you for... thank you!!! ;p

a new day...

2006-12-18T18:35:00.000+11:00

it's been 3 days since my last post...

and since then i've spent:

3 days crying
3 days panicking
3 days driving the boys insane with frantic phonecalls

BUT I'M ALL BETTER NOW! YAY!

i guess the hardest thing i had to come to terms with was the thought that i'd messed up enough to condemn my dream - studying medicine (be it through psych or directly) at melbourne university. worst of all, i had to watch as my friends, who over the past year have been through everything with me, walked through the gates without me. i had to come to terms with letting go of the ideal...

someone younger, but wiser than me, told me not too long ago that we needed to exist without ideals. that we needed to take life as it came and accept people and situations for what they were. and to me... i had this notion that if i didn't prove everyone wrong... and go to the best school and do the 'best' course... i would spend the rest of my life, and my family's life, regretting it. it was melbourne uni or bust! and not making the grade... meant that i'd disappointed ALOT more people than just myself. or worst of all... i'd proven everyone right.

so i cried lots till my eyes hurt so bad i walked around with them closed ;p the fact that mom was calling up all the ed agencies only made it worse... cause in the deep vestiges of my mind... it was like mom was working hard to clean up the catastrophe of my existence. that ultimately... i'd shown her i was unfit to be on my own. that i had to come home.

it's funny how, in the face of desperation, you are willing to compensate ANYTHING and sacrifice EVERYTHING in an effort to bring yourself an inch closer to your dreams. when i saw my results i was willing to take any course if it meant that i could go to melbourne uni. who cared if i knew what horticulture was all about?!

so yeah... on saturday i was basically running myself into the ground and i needed to get out of the house... FAST! so i speed-dialled my buddy mark (sorry if i was ~~ridiculously~~ indecipherable through the tears, mark :() and convinced him that i needed to bail. so while he worked on getting a car for the day, i followed ridwan to the monash uni kl campus for their annual open day. walked around for a little while talking to the respective faculty advisors. ultimately, the monash visit did loads for my confidence... when getting my results, i was certain that it was all over... that i no longer had any options. but thankfully, i make the grade at monash (even for the melbourne campus!) and the advisors were really welcoming and hopeful, which got me smiling and hyper ;D

on my way to meet a psychology lecturer from the melbourne caufield campus, i heard a REALLY loud "YANA!" by someone close by. before i had enough time to react, i see jacqui running towards me... fists outstretched ;p in the midst of punching me and asking me why i didn't tell her i was back (ignore the fact i'd only gotten back the night before!), i got one of her great big hugs that i missed so much ;p by the end of the session, mark had called back with a car and i was to meet him at bangsar for an emergency cheering-up intervention ;p

for the first time in ages, i found bsc's jockey parking booked full! reluctantly i had to go into underground parking and circled for almost 30 mins before finding a corner to park my matrix. mark hadn't called so i ran up to the bookstore to kill time (reading the mags reminds me of you, jacq-jacq! i'm gonna miss our borders' stops ;p). after 10 minutes of reading, i noticed a pair of feet walk up to me and stop. apparently, us psychos think alike ;p

headed to coffee bean to eat... but the chocolate ice blended looked too tempting to ignore. so... despite mark's protest, i decided to forgo lunch and console myself. though he got some chocolate too, mark and i argued about the 'validity' of chocolate. apparently it's not a food group! absurd ain't it ;p but soon my tummy begged for mercy and we hopped from coffee bean to delifrance and hung out till close to dinner time, talking about everything from personal attachments to star wars books. you know mark, you may think that saturday was just filled with random disagreements and pointless ramblings, but it's days like that and moments like those and friends like you that make life's obstacles just ~~a little~~ more bearable... thanks for cheering me up mark ;)

so with a new resolve, i'm applying EVERYWHERE! who cares if melbourne uni won't take me?! i'll find another uni that will! deakin's gotta a better psych program anyway! ;p (i sound really bitter don't i? but it's the truth! maureen and ian both did their PhDs there!) and about my friends... i'll always have them. i'll always remember the great year we had together... and i'll always miss having them around every corner. i'll always miss having lunch with my boys, and having jacq-jacq knock on my door rushing me to class. but next year is going to be great ;D

trust me ;)

saying goodbye

2006-12-15T08:39:00.000+11:00

i know i promised a flood of posts and pics on my graduation and the new zealand trip... but i need to get this out of my head first...

got my final results today. i'm not going to repeat what i got... but just know that when i saw the grade online... all i could do was cry. i know that it's a REALLY childish reflex to have... but i just couldn't believe it. for a split second... all i had playing on loop in my head was "it's over. how could you LET it be over!" by the time the figure settled into my head, it was time for me to get out of my cousin's room and tell the family how i did. nothing broke my heart more than to see their expectant, smiling faces turn to despair. mom truly believed that melbourne uni was a done deal for me... to tell her that it was all over... something i NEVER wanted to have to do. EVER.

then the 'fixing it' moment started. people telling me i didn't do badly and that i could still get entrance anywhere i wanted. that i'd done my best. that it wasn't all that bad. i felt like i was suffocating in my own panic. i had truly messed it up this time... and i didn't know what to do.

instinctively i ran to the phone to wake joel and mark up (mind you it was 4am in kl). like as if it would provide me with some form of comfort, i told them to get up cause the results were out. though i made no attempt to hide the fact that i was crying my head off... the boys still managed in their moments of incoherence and unconsciousness, to cheer me up and tell me that everything was NOT YET over. mark said 'hug hug' for the first time ;)

here's a bold but true fact: my friends HAVE NOT replaced my family. but instead they've become part of it. over the last 10 months, i've experienced MANY firsts. alone. here's the thing you realise when you go away... and for all you people reading this who are still at home, within proximity of your family - the people that support you... be grateful for that! because when you go away.... when you become alone... TRULY without a support system... it is the scariest thing that you will ever experience in your entire life. in moments when you feel like your world is collapsing around you - be it because of school or relationships or friendships or all of the above - when you come home... to NO ONE... and yet still having to force yourself to get up and LIVE... let's just say not geting up at all, becomes the more favoured option.

but i made friends... who kept me going and pulled me up whenever i fell this year. in times when i really needed mom to be here, but she just couldn't be... mark, joel, kevin, jacq and ai-lynn were. so this morning, when i felt like as if i really had nowhere else to go... i needed to talk to them. my only regret is that till today, eventhough she doesn't say it, i know that mom thinks that i only turn to them for comfort. that only the voices of my 'boys' can put a smile back on my face. but nothing could be further from the truth! we went through loads this year... together... and there were multiple times when i cried in front of them to save my mom from the long distance worry and unwanted sadness. and as childish as this may seem... they see the emotional aspect of disappointments and DELAY the rational so that i can cry and feel better and DEAL. i'm sorry that mom had to see me run to them when i got sad. but i needed someone to hug me and tell me that everything was going to be okay... i still need that.

so yeah... my day could not have started worse. in the midst of everyone packing up for home right now, i'm blogging away in ridwan's room. whether it is to avoid or hide i am yet to figure out. but all i know is....

i really don't know what to do

i've messed things up so bad

i need to fix it

i need to fix my mistake

i need to get into melbourne university!

I AM NOT GOING HOME FOR GOOD

i am not saying goodbye to this place

i am not saying goodbye to my friends

i can't say goodbye...

soon people... soon...

2006-12-13T16:58:00.000+11:00

hey guys! i bet most of you have been wondering whether i'm still alive... and i'm pleased to report that i still am ;D

in christchurch, new zealand right now at the airport motel, waiting for my flight back to melbourne tomorrow morning at 7am (5am melb time). been staying at blenheim for the past few days, where handphone network (and not to mention an internet connection!) is rather impossible to get (so if you've been sms-ing me or trying to call me... sorry!).

all i can say is... new zealand is by far the most beautiful place i've ever visited. from the snowy tops to the sprawling valleys... this place just took our breaths away upon arrival. though the 5 hour drive from christchurch to blenheim left us all restless and exhausted... but the pics i caught and the scenery i experienced was way worth it! so cammy... as i said... you are probably one of the luckiest girls on the planet to be able to study in this country! plus your 'view' is MUCH nicer than mine!!!! :D hehehehe.

pics and more detailed posts will be up the minute i get back to melbourne... they charge per minute here :(

see you guys at home soon!

counting it down...

2006-11-17T22:45:00.000+11:00

with finals coming up... postings have kind of slowed down... so sorry to all you people who have been wondering what i've been up to lately. trust me... lots to tell... just no time to do it all. finals end on the 29th, so expect a flood of posts after that.

note: there are still a load of pics from the prom that i am yet to upload... so wait a couple of weeks before you see the rest kay?

well... as the title suggests... trinity is coming to an end. i know i've been yapping on about it for weeks, but it's official now! graduation is in TWO WEEKS! most times i don't know whether to jump in celebration, or baracade in a corner and cry. classes ended last week with drama exams concluding this one. it's like everytime i see my teachers, i can't help but wonder whether it will be the last time. teachers like patricia, ian, pat... those who've made the biggest impact on my time here... those who have bent over backwards to help me get to where i want to go... the thought of saying goodbye, seems like too little a gesture to make up for all that they've done. patricia's son kaspar has been my playing buddy every friday this semester. for the past 5 months i've watched him grow and learn how to walk, talk (and drool ;p) and even draw, and after leaving my weekly meeting with his mom this afternoon, i was saddened by the thought that he's going to do lots more growing... just without me around to watch and make sure he doesn't stick a pen in his mouth ;p

that having been said, kids like kaspar and hafiz act as my motivation to do paediatrics. over the last 10 years i've seen my little brother overcome and accomplish amazing things. things that, in all honesty, i couldn't survive through. and yet he still gets up everyday with a cheeky smile on his face, eager to challenge anyone who dares. even at the age of one, kaspar can pick up anything you teach him in less than a minute. just show him how, and he'll be off doing it too. he doesn't need to understand the symantics or the politics of it all, as us more grown up people would fuss about. all he has to know is that it can be done... and that itself made the difference. every child to me... no matter the experiences they may have undergone... possess a type of innocence or clarity about the world. and even if it takes me forever to get there, i'm going to make sure that i have a hand... that EVERYONE has a hand... in preserving that. making sure that every child is safe... one kid at a time :D

so yes... i have an entire speech planned out should i get into medical school ;p but as i said... baby steps. so in the mean time... i have to work my ass off and ace as many exams in trinity as possible. drama is no exception... unfortunately ;p

since finding out that drama is a compulsory subject here at trinity, contributing to 30% of my overall english grade... only one thing came to mind - who do i have to kill to make this subject go away?! i can't act even if my life depended on it! all through secondary school, i was the one backstage writing up the script... i DO NOT belong on stage with the glaring lights. it's not that i get scared... heck ballet kicked all ounces of stage fright out of me... it was that i just don't - like -doing- it. the world is filled with enough fake people as it is... why add more? ;p but yeah... there was no working around it. after term 1 i was tailgating my drama class, getting the lowest score for the first assessment. then i figured that i had no choice. whether i liked it or not... i had to ace the subject to graduate. i had to put on the makeup... digest the lines... plaster on the fake emotions... and kick ass at it ;p so far, drama has accumulated 20%.

i got 19.75 out of it ;p

okay! i admit it! drama ain't as bad as i thought it was. granted i wanted to slit my wrists everytime rose came into the drama room all chirpy and excited about the weird 'drama-ish' games we were about to play. but the projects we've been given for our assessments have been fun. and since drama is a subject that prides itself of encouraging complete self-expression, i decided to play to my strengths. mom always said there were only three words to describe me - dark. twisted. complex. so in drama... i'm dark, twisted and complex :D and i've also learned something new! when on normal occasions i'd volunteer to do solo projects, the past semester has forced me to collaborate with others in group tasks. and i could not possibly ask for a better team both times! and it's been great!!! since last term, jason has been on my team and he's the best teammate anyone could ask for. talented and funny, he's always willing to try new things even at the cost of making himself look like a complete idiot! and we seem to function on the same frequency in our performances... so whenever i clam up or worry about how things are going to go on stage, all i've got to do is look at him and everything falls back into place.

this term was no different. last time me and jason took the comedic approach and got applauded for it. this time, with 2 other guest examiners sitting in, we didn't want to risk pulling off a half-hearted comedy (eventhough i know the jason mah fanclub would be up for whatever he performed ;p). so with our new team members, janice and ai vyn, we wrote up a play with the presented theme of betrayal. my character suffered from bipolar disorder and so i spent weeks laughing in the dark, rocking in a corner and consuming MANY bottles of juice to gain the sugar high ;p but it all paid off cause the play came off better than i could have hoped for. being in the first scene, i was the first one to be on stage with the lights and eyes on me. the adrenaline was awesome. before long the others had joined me and we relished in the thought of our last performance. the applause afterward was amazing... worth every painstaking hour we put into it. backstage jason was hugging me and jumping up and down in celebration. drama was truly over... in more ways than one :D cause after this... jason, along with all the singaporean boys like michael, robin, kenneth and nick, have to ship off to national service for 2 years. they'll be 19 before i see them again... and for michael, who's been my little brother over here... saying goodbye to him is something i'm not looking forward to.

spent the past couple of days watching everyone else's drama. ai-lynn's was before mine on wednesday... clearly reminding me that she is the queen of all emo performances, making me feel minutely small :p mark's was on thursday... that boy never ceases to amaze me when it comes to his drama... like a switch has been flicked, he goes from the sadistic and yet brilliant kid that he is, to anyone he wants to be ;p joel's was this morning, and in classic fashion he truly is artsy fartsy boy, taking pride in his role to the max ;p i missed jacq jacq's... but since her character was schizophrenic i have faith she pulled it off convincingly... she's been living with me the past 9 months hasn't she?! ;p and kevin's was the last one this afternoon... his performance was so scary i have to call him to hear his REAL voice everytime i watch the tape... never thought i could be immensely terrified and proud at the same time... but i am ;p

niways... it's getting late and i got heaps of psychology to get through. till my next post i'll probably be slogging it out with my books and cherishing the time i have left with my friends ;D

my perfect night... one year late...

2006-11-05T21:37:00.000+11:00

on december 9th 2005, mandarin oriental hotel in kuala lumpur played host to sri aman secondary girls' school's senior prom. conducted precisely one week after the completion of the spm examinations, the form 5 graduating class wasted no time in kicking back the books and cherishing their final moments together. before the real world beckoned.

... i spent my senior prom in the ladies' bathroom hiding...

on november 3rd 2006, trinity college had their annual ball at the grand hyatt hotel melbourne. marking the impending finals and imminent graduation for the 459 students that made up the february main intake. everyone dressed to impress with the thought that separation awaited all of them in approximately 30 days.

... i spent my college ball... having the time of my life ;p

___________________________________________________________________

i woke up on friday morning with a swarm of giant butterflies and grasshoppers jumping around in my tummy. after my weekly chemistry meeting with patricia, i rushed home to change before walking to the lecture theater. as usual, the boys had saved a seat for me in the second last row. and as usual, joel was in attendance eventhough he wasn't enrolled for the subject ;p regardless, i did my level best to comprehend as much 'green chemistry' as possible before going to the mess hall for lunch. all the while frantic that i hadn't completed the second friendship bracelet that made up kevin's 'prom trimmings'. after running home (yet again!) to grab my math books, i attended my maths 1 lecture... my final class for the day. by the time i walked out of the hall... i had the bracelet completed in my back pocket :D (how do i split my concentration? ;p) with my nerves not letting up, i watched the 4th season premiere of 'las vegas' for an hour before getting ready. after 2 panicked phonecalls to joel... who made it known that kevin was with him (talk about making it worse!)... i took the leap of faith (and doa lots and lots) and attempted to recreate the hair and makeup as shown by mom a week earlier.

by 6:35pm i had my dress on, my hair and makeup done and my tummy STILL hadn't let up! jacq came home from doing her hair at concept blue and was looking all gorgeous when the boys called and told me they were in the lobby (they had to wait a WHILE before we actually came down ;D). in typical movie fashion, us girls had to come down the stairs instead of taking the lift. knowing that joel had a surprise for her, i made jacq go down the steps first. all jacq had to do was peek her head around the banister and joel was already going nuts. amidst the 'oh my god's and 'damn!'s that joel was letting out for his beautiful date, i came down (on seriously shaky legs!) and saw kevin and mark standing in the corner. kevin was in his suit and mark was in a black samfu-ish shirt that made both of them look great nonetheless. kevin put a bright yellow corsage on my hand (that matched the flower in my hair!) and mark (which i didn't expect at all!) put a white one on. so yeah... i had two dates! ;p i gave kevin the friendship band i made... and to my relief he chose to wear it immediately. and no matter how corny it sounds... i wore mine too ;p

after dropping their bags up in jacq's room, all 5 of us walked out into the street (avoiding curious glares) to the horse-drawn carriage that waited on swanston street. it felt so surreal! i was jumping out of my skin all excited but hat to keep calm as i knew jacq (who was the only person who didn't know about our 'ride') was probably freaking out more. almost to the hotel i noticed joel and kevin trading glances at each other and nodding. joel searched in his jacket pocket and pulled out a grey box and handed it to jacq. kevin did the same and came up with a little parcel he put in my hand. as joel helped jacq put on her silver necklace, i opened my parcel up. inside was the most beautiful pair of earings... WHICH MATHCHED MY DRESS TOO! (i swear that boy has been poking around my room more than he let on!) i took off the blue earings i was wearing and put my new ones on ;D i still can't get over them.... kev, thank you so much!

before long we realised that there were FIVE carriages heading for hyatt. it felt like somewhat of a parade. the hotel entrance was swarmed with trinity students clad in their best. i lost my legs again when i got off the carriage. finally being there... all kinds of phobias introduced themselves. eugene and allynna arrived a few minutes after us and we walked into the hotel together. taking a few pictures with almost every girl screaming and trading compliments, i walked into the ballroom attached to kevin on my left... and mark on my right (i felt like a pimp :D, but a good one!) we met ai-lynn, li ern and wai yen, which completed our table, and made our way to table 26. the hall was decorated to impress. with the ball themed 'hollywood', the student committee pulled out all the stops... flowers and balloons in abundance.

prom was great. the music selection was superb and everyone was having a great time. not a single person recognised me on first glance... which worried the hell out of me! but a part of me knew that was a good thing. we took hundreds of pictures and lots with our teacher pat too, who decided at the last minute to join us (sorry your holiday got cancelled pat!). joel was all geared up to hit the dance floor (he ditched his crutch for the night and was walking perfectly on two legs! i'm so proud of you joe!). michael was the centre of attraction, ultimately winning best male dancer for the night. i made a round or two with jacq and lay leng, and even danced a bit with gavin before running back to the table. but all in all... the prom was fun. i got to spend one night off with great music and awesome company ;p

[me, ai-lynn, jacq, joel, kevin and mark... the people who make my day ;D]

[me and lilian]

[me an joel... my younger older brother ;p]

[me and mark... my partner in random crime ;p]

[me and michael... the puppy-dog little brother i'm gonna miss so much ;p]

[me, jacq and allynna]

[joel, me, kevin and mark... my three boys ;p]

the hall cleared out by 12.30am, as everyone decided on which of the three clubs to hit for the afterparty. me, kevin, mark, jacq, joel, allynna, eugene and jon decided to take the safe route and walked to crown for late-night cake at grecco. the 8 of us ended up ordering FIVE cakes... and for those of you who don't know... grecco's cakes are HUGE! after a few bites, allynna and jacq were on a massive sugar high and couldn't stop laughing. a great indicator that it was time to head home (and that it was almost 3am ;p). i called mom from crown and she sounded all excited about my fairytale night... if only she knew how painful my feet were though :( we shared a cab and dropped jon and eugene off at melbourne central and allynna at arrow before going back to nelson. we took one last picture in our suits, before changing out into our pyjamas to wait for sunrise. mark fell asleep the minute he hit the couch ;D but the rest of us stayed up till 5.30am before climbing up the access ladder to the rooftop. (and to be inventive... we jammed a calculator case in between the door so it wouldn't lock us out ;p)

with my laptop in my bag, me, jacq, joel and kevin sat by the railing and watched as the dark night sky became lighter and lighter. the stars peeled away and the sky was now tinted with shades of light blue and orange. hot air balloons filled the air too as some opted for an aerial view of the sunrise. but i was still restless. so i got up... turned my laptop on and played michael buble and nelly furtado's 'quando quando quando' on loop. with the sunrise in the background and the balloons high above us... me and kevin had our one slow dance ;p and yeah... jacq and joel were sniggering the whole time. the sun decided not to show itself clearly behind the clouds, so we climbed back down as the hour approached 7. taking thankful refuge in the warmth from the cold upstairs.

when we got back... mark was STILL asleep exactly where we left him. so we woke him up, dragged him to jacq's room, showed him the beanbag... and let him fall back to sleep. the rest of us had ice cream, hot chocolate and toast for breakfast... exchanging awes at the fact that prom was the night before.

joel made it public knowledge how amazing he thought jacq looked that night. and no matter how sweet that was... i wouldn't trade my moment for the world. at 4:30am waiting for light, well after prom was over. one word: beautiful ;D

it came one year late, but i had a memorable prom. i had a dress i was proud of, friends who turned me away from my hesitations, and dates that ensured i wasn't alone the entire night. so to mom, thanks for putting so much effort into helping me get my dress and tutoring me on the art of hair and makeup... i couldn't've looked how i did or had all the fun i had without you, mommy ;D to jacq, joel, allynna, eugene, ai-lynn, li ern and wai yen... thanks for making the prom special. and to mark and kevin... thanks for making my prom... mine :D

the pics you missed...

2006-11-05T16:58:00.000+11:00

so here it is... for your viewing pleasure... the pics you missed last time...

photos during eap:

mark's daily implementation of torture...

the worst part about being shorter than mark tan... is that fighting back almost becomes impossible :(

after class... joel found himself being school-ed... by me ;D

... and don't worry... the post you've all been waiting for will be up soon ;D

48 hours till...

2006-11-01T20:46:00.000+11:00

yes... the title says it all... it is now officially 48 hours till trinity college's annual ball at grand hyatt hotel. which meant that today... was very very VERY long.

my usually 11-am-starting wednesday saw me out of the house for extra chemistry help at 9.30. after asking about how to properly name amine, amide and ammonium ion compounds (greek anyone?) and playing around with the ever adorable kasper nickel (my chem lecturer's 1-year-old son ;D), i ran off to my drama class and did a run through for our final drama exam. i don't think i have screamed, cried or jumped around so much over the span of 3 days in my entire life (my character is bipolar... so for all you people back home in kl... use your imagination... or just think of me on a sugar high ;p).

after drama was lunch, so as usual i picked mark up from his literature tutorial... at which point i bumped into kevin, and walked across the street to union house to met up with jacq and joel. for the first time in months, all 5 of us ate lunch in the courtyard opposite the old physics building, instead of having lunch illegally in the eap classroom! (and mark... it's too late to start a trend!)

eap started off with pat critising me and joel for listening to what she considered 'old-people-music'. apparently her 17-year-old son is doing it too. for according to her, people in 2006 shouldn't be listening to stuff from the 60's, 70's and 80's. and here me and joel were singing to ella fitzgerald and louis armstrong's 'can't take that away from me', which was playing from my laptop ;D. but no matter what she said... she was singing along to it before long :p

when everyone else left, the cameras came out and the 5 of us took full advantage of the space and the prospect of blackmail. a few minutes later pat came back to class to look for her keys and was dragged in too. pat's probably been the one constant in all of our lives. she's supported us and guided us through leaving home, getting used to the new education system, applying for uni and every other obstacle we've had to deal with this year. kind of like our surrogate mom ;D letting her go and saying goodbye in about a month is going to undoubtedly be one of the hardest things ANY of us have to do.

after class we were done for the day. so i had to run home to get my dress, whilst kevin and joel went to collins street to get joel's plane ticket validated. before that i managed to get joel into a headlock while kevin grabbed his camera. and yeah... whether you choose to admit it or not joe... i so kicked your butt :D

since mark is the only guy who's seen my dress, he followed me to the city to get the dress pressed by the dry cleaners. when we met up with joel and kevin, i had to dump mark's REALLY warm jacket over the dress to cover it up cause they were walking with their hands over their eyes! but before long... the warmth of the jacket took its effect on my arm... was dying to just shove the jacket at them and tell them to fly a kite ;D i was such a girl at the dry cleaners... i was terrified! i couldn't part with my dress! we ended up walking in a circle for 20 minutes to pacify me before i sent the dress in. the guess what... they said that i didn't need it pressed and gave the dress back! woohoo! i get to keep my 'baby' under lock and key and under my safe supervision till friday :D

tomorrow is going to get longer. with the class photo at 12.40, lunch with ridwan at 1 and dinner with allynna at 7, i'm going to have to be the energizer bunny to get through the day. DID I ALSO MENTION I HAVE FINALS IN 3 WEEKS THAT I NEED TO STUDY FOR?!

*sigh* 48 more hours till...

p/s: lots of the pics aren't loading so i'll try to load it up in the next one ;D

updates...

2006-10-30T19:51:00.000+11:00

first off i'd like to give a massive hello to one of my blog readers, sarah lee! your big brother joel is a really great guy (which i bet you already know by now :D) and talks about you and sandra like crazy ;D i don't think i could have survived these past months away from home without him. he misses you guys loads and i apologise in advance if anything i say or HAVE said publicises his weirdness for all to see... ;p

also a shout out goes to ANOTHER sarah... my 16-year-old cousin-a.k.a-other part of my brain has come down with chicken pox! so if you've managed to prop yourself up to your laptop to read this... just know that i REALLY REALLY hope you get well soon! i'm praying for you! and rest please! hug hug :D

okay so... been a little while since i last wrote up. not that i haven't had much to say... trust me... i have LOTS to write about. but with trinity winding down, time hasn't exactly been kind to us all. never thought i would say it... but i'm going to miss it . the teachers. the classes. the hours. everything :( but to quote one tree hill, "every great song has an ending... but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy the music" ;p so i'm taking everyone's advise and just going with it. enjoying every second i have left before the real world beckons.

mom and hafiz, along with uncle mel, auntie peng, sarah and sophie came done to melbourne 2 weeks ago and spent raya with me and ridwan. it was nice NOT to have to spend my first raya away from home alone. i moved to toorak for the week so i could stay with mom and fiz... at the consequence of being no earlier that 30 mins late for class everyday (stupid toorak road traffic!). mom cooked up a storm and we had a open house on tuesday. though i miss kl-raya like crazy, it was great to not miss out. jacq, joel, kevin, mark, eugene and allynna came by and had mom's sprawling menu of roti jala, rendang, brownies, etc. lesley allen (the lady who recruited me to trinity ;D) came too! so yeah people... i raya-ed! ;D sadly, my family had to leave on friday (on mom's birthday no less!)... but they're coming back for my graduation, so all's good :D

let's see... prom is on friday! after months of worrying about it and getting all excited, it's finally here! my dress is hanging in my cupboard. the makeup has been all picked out. and i've finally figured out what 'trimmings' to get kevin ;p but all the hype aside, i know prom is our final celebration. for after the glamour, dancing and laughing, the evil face of finals shines above us. truly the deciding moment of our futures. either we make it. or we don't. and for the life of me, i DO NOT want to be in the second category! so after prom and our make-shift after party (on my rooftop with ice cream and hot chocolate watching the sunrise in our suits and dresses ;p) and joel's birthday the next day, books will once more be my best friends... and scruffy too :D!

since loosing my necklace, my focus has been all over the place. my mind's been playing all kinds of tricks on me! weird stuff pop into my head at awkward moments... things i don't want to think about the MOST become the things that occupy the MOST headspace... argh! i don't have ALOT of headroom to begin with... so girly-unimportant-ridiculous-random thoughts vacate for chemisty, psychology and maths 1 please! QUICKLY!

spring is here... and in typical melbourne fashion, it's freezing outside! though i would be more than happy to walk around in my hoodies and jeans, there will be a photo-op for the graduating february class on thursday. looks like i gotta dig out all the girly tops now :( how annoying is it that it's already 8pm and the sun is still out! someone shoot the people who condone DST!

so yeah, everything's okay. just tired and lethargic as usual. hmmm... tummy hungry but massive pile of dishes sitting in sink... decisions decisions :D

just when i thought i'd seen it all

2006-10-16T23:07:00.000+10:00

so my final eap oral exam was this afternoon. and contrary to popular belief, being the first one up isn't something to be proud of. they say 'rip the bandage off'... i say 'leave it be!'. don't get me wrong... i LOVE talking. heck, i've been talking since i was a fetus... but when i am required to talk for my grades... and in academic fashion... lets just say my heart landed in my stomach and my stomach was in my throat the entire time! but hey, it's all over and now that it's done with, don't think it was THAT bad. mark, kevin and joel were the first to protest when i relayed my worries regarding the length and formality of my speech. jacq jacq had a few things to say too... but for some reason, when i KNOW she'll do expertly regardless, believing her in such matters doesn't come naturally ;D

without puasa the day passed rather quickly (yes yes! i've taken SOOO many days off! i'm starting again tomorrow!). between my lit and chem tutorials, eap and chem lecture, the notion of climbing into bed in my relatively-newly-changed sheets was a thought i looked forward to all day (eap kept me up last night ;( yes children... last minute work is no good!). but by late morning, michael reminded me that i had to be in the audience at tonight's 'spring music fesitval' to watch him perform. and since joel was drumming too... figured i'd succumb to obligation and mope later ;p

by the time we got there at quarter to 6, the theater was packed... thankfully down in the fourth row, joel had laid his crutches across a row of seats for us (those things are really useful ;D). his band was going on 12th, so we had plenty of time to breathe before being required to cheer our lungs out. michael played the guitar in the first performance with nick on vocals (perfectly i might add!)... but the best part was... when nick left the stage... mike played the acoustic AND sang all by himself for the second performance. and he was good! singing songs by jason mraz and john mayer, i'd never heard little mikey sing before. and just like an immensely proud big sister i clapped and cheered and yelled all the way through. mikey, you rock!

but something hinky was going on between kevin and joel, who were seated next to each other (dodgy i know... but bear with me ;p). whenever i looked over, joel gave me that signature 'budak nakal' smile he plasters on whenever he has a wicked idea. within minutes he got up off his seat and disappeared out the theater doors. after joel left, kevin grabbed my handphone and typed out a message for me:

joel's gonna do something really wild that's gonna let the whole trinity know about him and jacq.

imagine all the thoughts flying in and out of my head at that time. apparently this declaration was to be done in the midst of his drumming to jet's 'are you gonna be my girl' (ironic huh?). with me, kevin and ai-lynn in on it, our job was to ensure that jacq jacq kept her eyes on joel while he played. but in typical jacq jacq fashion, she stared at everything BUT joel! if anyone so much as stood up or even flinched, jacq's eyes were cast in their direction. so to keep her focused (and to calm her suspicions about why all the malaysian kids were speaking malay around her) i told her that joel had been working really hard on the piece and that if he messed it up, being a song that focuses much on drum beats, the whole song would go to hell (thank god jacq doesn't listen to jet ;p) seconds before the ending verse, joel looked up from the drums and smiled the 'budak nakal' smile at me again. and then it happened...

as the band sang the concluding line..."say are you gonna be my girl?"...
joel stood up and pointed right at jacq jacq from behind the drum kit.

it was too late to take it back. anyone who noticed now knew. and jacq jacq had the biggest smile on her face! she didn't see it coming, but no matter how much she denies it... made her feel like the most important person in the world for a few seconds :D i know this... cause i was right next to her laughing my ass off!

me, kevin, joel and jacq jacq bolted immediately after he got off stage. adrenalin having settled down, i was starving. so the four of us went for an italian dinner at lygon street. since it's usually just me with jacq and joel on our dinners, it felt weird having kevin around to back me up whenever a teasing spree started between them. though we kinda feel immune, since no matter what those two say about us, me and kevin just make it worse ;p walking home the wind was freezing, and since kevin was wearing a thick jumper, i told him NOT to take it the wrong way and hugged his arm all the way home. and before you think the yana you know has gone all soft and girly, know that it didn't come without a hidden agenda. we got to see jacq and joel squirm ;D yes... i'm still sadistic... i just got company now ;D

so all in all, today was good. glad that i can finally take a break now...

and get ready for mommy and hafiz! yay!

the beginning of the end... or the end of the beginning?

2006-10-15T12:44:00.000+10:00

so yeah... i've been yapping on about it for a while now... but graduation IS around the corner. to be precise... as of this instant, at 2.18pm on october 15th 2006, my time at trinity will end in exactly:

1 month, 2 weeks, 6 days, 1 hour and 12 minutes ;p (yes... i have nothing better to do ;D).

but instead of mourning the end and dreading the beginning, i've decided to take a different approach. don't get me wrong... i've had my fair share of mopping these past few weeks. trying hard to ignore the fact that VERY soon, i'll have leave the city i've partially called home with a sense of uncertainty as to whether i'll return. pushing the thought under the cupboard of being separated from the friends i've become attached to. and forgetting the need to say goodbye to the teachers here who have challenged fate to help me get to where i want to go. but YEAH... i'm looking at things from a different angle ;p

someone a little older than me, told me the other day, that no matter how painful... or how much i dread the coming weeks, i can't stop the inevitable. when we left our homes for melbourne at the beginning of the year, this was what we wanted. this was what we hoped for. 10 months of roughing it out... for a chance to live our dreams. so no matter how much the thought hung over my head, the fear will never go away. instead all i can hope for... all anyone can hope for... is the chance to enjoy all the time we have left ;D

... before the stress gets to us and we REALLY fulfill the 4-step purification plan (trust me people... you don't want to know what that is ;D though i can just see mark smiling now.)

so depressive notions aside, everything's great. melbourne's full into spring... which means MORE erratic weather and unpredictable temperatures, but the sun is out! and after a long winter... i'll take sunlight any day ;D classes have become slightly more relaxed... it seems that trinity is easing the tension before they cut us loose ;p

Intinerary for the final term and the months after:
1. tomorrow i will the first person in eap 3v to conduct my final oral presentation: on 'the effects of the film industry on society'
2. mommy and hafiz, along with uncle mel, auntie peng, sarah and sophie will arrive in melbourne on thursday night to spend raya here with me and ridwan.
3. on november 3rd, me and my 5 closest friends will attempt to stop 24 hours as we hit melbourne's grand hyatt hotel on collins street for the trinity annual ball.
4. less than 24 hours after the prom... me, ai-lynn, jacq jacq, mark and kevin get to watch as joel lee dreads his 18th birthday (scared yet joe? ;p).
5. much time and practise to be diverted to my 'bipolar' act for the final drama exam.
6. time off to study...
7. FINALS!
8. RESULTS!
9. trinity college's february main intake 2006 valedictory ceremony on december 5th 2006 at 3.30pm.
10. family trip to christchurch, new zealand on december 10th.
11. back home in kl from december 15th.
12. kevin (and maybe even jacq jacq) to spend a few days in kl with us on the second week of january.
13. university offer letters come out.
14. time starts again...

so now, ladies and gentlemen, i plan on acting on my latest resolution: getting into melbourne university and enjoying the time i have left in trinity and with my friends.

... unfortunately that begins with me finishing up my eap presentation...

calm before the storm...

2006-10-08T23:00:00.000+10:00

so it's sunday. which means that tomorrow is monday. which means that i have to go to school tomorrow. (way to go at stating the obvious huh)... but that also means i just came out of a weekend... a much needed one.

after collecting results this past week, i think everyone was just looking forward to the weekend as a reason to breathe. 48 hours that belonged entirely to us. no shadows of the past term hovering over us. no tell-tale reminders of the upcoming finals frightening us (though it should ;D). just 2 days to shake off the mild-hearattacks endured and brace ourselves for what the final 2 months had in store. some go clubbing to meet their colourful alcohol-based friends. others bury their heads in past lectures to numb out the pain. i on the other hand... made it MY weekend ;p

just like every saturday, jacq-jacq was at my door by 12pm to drag me for chemistry support lectures at swanston street. eventhough i detest the need to NOT sleep in on a saturday, i owe that little girl for getting me out of bed and placing my chemistry grades at a salvageable level. by 1.30, we had convinced mark to go with us on our fortnightly ritual of buying groceries from vic market. honestly, we just wanted to interrogate him on the interview he had with adelaide university the day before ;p but as expected... mark's response was "it was fine!". though we know he did superbly and he's just blind to his brilliance... so no mark... we don't believe you ;D. joel called not long after, saying that he was headed to nelson to get some work done. by 4, we came home with 2 pizzas from dominos (no... haven't been fasting ;p) and settled in to my apartment to watch 'take the lead'. about 15 minutes later, kevin called and figured out that he was being excluded... and came too. so by the end of the movie... i had all of my closest friends (minus ai-lynn :( ), crammed in my studio apartment, hanging out till the sun went down.

today was no different. after spending the early afternoon searching the libraries for eap resources, me and jacq came home to get a head start on reading (though i felt my brain turn to mush after every sentence!). at 4pm, kevin was ringing my doorbell... and half an hour later... joel was ringing jacq's doorbell (i acknowledge the pattern... and smite whoever does too! ;p). as the 'big brother', kevin cooked us dinner while joel downloaded more episodes of house md on my comp and jacq went through the books she got. cool piece of information i got today: joel knows ALOT of people from sri aman! apparently the boy went to sri petaling... so for all you people reading this and going... hey! i know a joel from sri petaling... yup... same guy ;D the world just keeps getting smaller. so it was rather interesting when we called up rai, and they got to talking. the world i came from... met the world i'm in... long before i did!

so yeah... today was good. we took lots of random pictures... and usually i would stay out of it... but you know what... we graduate in less than two months. after that, we'll all be thrown to different places and when uni begins, to different faculties. if this is all the time we've got left LIKE THIS... then i plan to hang on to every second of it ;D

emo-ness aside... i can't help but jump in anticipation over mom and fiz coming over on the 19th. sarah's coming too, which is awesome cause i miss our sundays! so for the first time all term... I WANT TIME TO MOVE FASTER! my family's coming to melbourne! woohooo!

... on second thought... come to think of it... my family in melbourne... all at the same time...

... who can we see about re-naming the city?

meet lethargy and fatigue... my new best friends

2006-10-04T16:34:00.000+10:00

to counteract the previously disturbing and cheesy posts i've added up lately, i've decided to change things up a little (there's only so much pathetic ramblings one person can hear at one time right? ;p). the title pretty much says it all... been feeling massively lethargic and fatigue-d today. and i blame puasa! hehehehe...

in all honesty, puasa is getting REALLY hard to do. getting up in the middle of the night for sahur is disrupting my sleep pattern, which in turn is making it ridiculously hard to get up in the morning. by lunchtime, when my tummy really starts going insane, campus no longer becomes a nice place to be... between the bubble teas, ice-creams and sushi rolls 'walking around', all i want to do is dig a hole and die in it. uncharacteristically, it was really hot outside today. which is making puasa that much harder to do without water!

that aside, i got my drama results back today. i did okay (though i can just here mark, joel and kevin screaming in protest)... but the worst part was choosing my new team members. as flattered (and shocked!) as i was to know that 3 people wanted me on their teams, i couldn't help but feel inclined to work with the people i previously acted with. so choosing was tough... and in the end only one of those 3 got their wish. lets just hope i don't disappoint her then ;p

by eap, i was on the verge of passing out. for some reason, fasting today was extremely hard. i've been fasting since i was 11 (very late... i know), and today was probably the first time that i felt almost annoyed that i couldn't eat! and before you guys start making noise, no... i don't hold mark, joel OR kevin responsible (though there WAS that fleeting moment when i wanted to kick kevin while he was eating his ice cream...) for making today difficult. i took something this morning... i guess fasting and medication don't go well huh?
so yeah... apart from that... melbourne is still melbourne. got our prom tickets today. the dress-code 'semi-formal' was printed on the front... damn... looks like i'm gonna be hiding in the bathroom again ;D and YEAH... is it so wrong that i want two dates?! (i can just hear the girls go "you selfish b***h!"... hehehe) i'm happy with the one i've got... but BOTH of us don't want to leave the other one behind! so come on!

back in melbourne... surprises and all...

2006-10-03T22:10:00.000+10:00

so i made it back to melbourne in one piece... though i don't think i remained that way for the rest of the day. after landing at melbourne international at 7:15am, we took a car back to the city and worked REALLY hard to convince ourselves NOT to sleep in and ditch the rest of the day. with only half an hour until my first class began, i made the executive decision not to show up on my first day of term 4 looking like the drowned rat that i was currently resembling. so after a much-appreciated shower, i walked the 15 minute path along grattan street to trinity's fsc building for my 9am literature tutorial (granted it was more 9:45am when i actually got there ;D).

so yeah... school is officially in session once more and i've adapted myself back to my usual routines. despite puasa (which is proving much harder than i thought over here!), everything feels pretty much the same. getting my results still gives me knots in my tummy. the air is still cold when i walk past alleys or trees but turns warmer when i hit a patch of sun. i still have my monday morning walks from fsc to the grattan street classroom with robin and michael, talking about things that aren't appropriate enough to be re-mentioned ;p i still have my lunches with joel, mark, kevin and jacq at melbourne uni's union house (eventhough i spent today watching and not participating ;p). and my room is STILL messy everytime i get back. everything's exactly the same... almost anyway ;D

this time i returned to an environment not as relaxed as it had been these past 8 months. everyone's hyped about the impending graduation on december 5th, the exams that come the weeks before it... and of course... the annual ball on november 3rd. with my dress still attempting perfection in ss14 back in kl, all i can do is wait till mom brings it over on the 19th to pacify my anticipation. but our table of 10 still needed to be filled. with only 6 people making up my circle of friends, others had to be invited to make the numbers. until finally... only 2 seats remained vacant. as usual... i decided to poke fun at mark and kevin yesterday night during dinner, which we had in the park at the public library (for those of you back home... yeah... unorthodox and REALLY weird practises have become habits over here ;p). telling them that they had to find dates instead. and this is where the story begins :D

i'd been planning my perfect prom since the day i got here. i put the plan into motion when i made the friends i could depend on. and then i decided on it a few months ago, when kevin imagined it with me... jacq and joel off with their dates (though at the time we didn't know that it would be each other!), ai-lynn dancing away with wai yen and li ern... and me, kevin and mark having the time of our lives in a corner somewhere. it was perfect! and all i needed was the killer dress. i didn't even count on a date... if it happened, it happened... but i was not going to repeat the mistake of going to look for one. but as expected, plans changed. and last night... it took a really unexpected turn ;p

for the first time in my life, someone i really care about asked me to go to prom. it wasn't orchestrated. he wasn't conned into it. and for the first time, i was given the choice to accept ;D eventhough it under no circumstances changed the group arrangement that we previously had, i couldn't help but be hyper all day on the fact that i was even asked! that for the first time... someone even SAW me... and didn't keep on walking ;p but with all great things, obstacles perceeded it. from worrying about everyone else's response, to an international consultation/intervention, within 12 hours it seemed that, as expected, this plan wasn't going to happen. so... i challenged it ;p

it's slightly past 11pm now... and food has left me groggy and in dire need of sleep. i still have a date for prom, but things have changed a little. and this is probably the thai food talking... but i'm giving it time to surprise me. who knows? it might actually work out better than i thought ;D