Random photos from work

Let's start with...



My favourite flowers- Gerberas! :D

People have been distributing them free on street corners to promote the recently-started renovation of the Wintergarden mall... and everyone in the staffroom (who got one) has put them into a big vase on Michael's desk (which is just next to mine), where they've brightened up the staffroom for days with their pretty colours :)

INTERNATIONAL DAY today. A couple of photos a student has kindly just emailed me..



With Edgar from Korea (right), Jamie (left) and Rex (below) from Taiwan!

Had wanted to wear a kebaya but I didn't bring mine from Malaysia.. wanted to borrow one from [ Izzy ] but hadn't had time to drop by her place so in the end I just wore my old cheongsam.



We had the most awesome breakfast in class this morning. I currently have a lot of Korean students in my class and they're all amaaazing cooks! I can't rmbr the names of all the dishes and I forgot to bring my camera, so I'm still waiting for another student to send me photos.

More food back in the staffroom...

Tea + my colleague Bella's super duper yummy homebaked FRUITCAKE. I've never been a huge fan of cake but OMG this one's to die for. I was already bursting at the seams but I just couldnt. stop. EATING.



Containers in the background: Roti canai & chicken curry- my contribution to breakfast! I brought kangaroo sausages too since I thought the students should try something Aussie, being in Australia... By the end of the day, I came home with both containers empty :)

Other noteworthy goodies I've stuffed my greedy self with today: Brazilian beijinho (little balls of condensed milk cooked with butter and coconut shreds.. SO GOOD), French crêpe, Aussie lamingtons, Korean rice milk (sounds weird but was actually pretty nice!) and Taiwanese dried tofu strips, etc. One of my sweetest students from Hungary actually made lángos for me (cos I'd told her how much I loved it from the West-end market), but she couldn't find me during lunch hour so I missed out :(((

It was one of my Korean students' last day today, and she gave me a little teddy in a hanbok to say Thank You :')



Postcard of steam train & sakura was from another Taiwanese student, who brought in a few different postcards to share with the class during his presentation this afternoon.

These little gifts always mean so much to me.. just knowing that they came with such sincerity from people who had brought them here from a land far far away. I put them all on my pinboard at work so that I'd never forget how many wonderful countries and cultures there are out there in the world still, waiting to be explored.

Other photos!

Sweets from Saudi Arabia...



I'm not obsessed with candy either but I just love these creamy chewy ones!! Syokness. Pity they can't be bought here.

Okay this one was obviously not taken at work lah hehe. Beautiful paper fan given by an older Japanese student.

This lovely Japanese lady couldn't speak much English and she didn't leave with much either since she was only in Australia for a week... but she really touched me with her ambition and drive! People like her really inspire me. When you're young at heart, age is nothing but a number, really.

Do I have the best job in the world or what? :)

. . . . .

QSC football match tomorrow! It's 1am now and I can't sleep cos I took a nap in the afternoon.. urgh.

Hen in the rain

When I was a student, there were days when I would wake up feeling down and emo and depressed for no apparent reason. I'd be quiet and sullen in class, keep to myself and answer questions only when I have to, or I'd simply skip class and sit by the lake or walk around the city until I feel better.

I still get days like that.

Only that now, skipping class is not really an option.

Rather, I'd (have to) plaster a big smile on my face, muster up every ounce of enthusiasm left in my system and try to brighten up the days of students feeling down and emo and depressed instead.

It just drains you and leaves you so very, very exhausted.

Cold feet no more

Cakiepoo bought this for me from Japan.

Now tell me if these aren't the cutest socks you've ever seen!!

Sunday in the park

My poor rollerblades finally got to see daylight again after having been buried in the garage for lightyears.

Happy Easter guys :)

To be or not to be... Malaysian

Watch.

Two weeks ago, a girlfriend asked if I could help out another mutual friend of ours, who was working on a media project. She was looking to interview a Malaysian working full-time in Australia on why s/he had migrated and had decided to stay on and work/live overseas.

I politely declined with the excuse that I was terrible in front of cameras, as the interview would have to be filmed. More than that, I was actually afraid I might say the wrong thing under the pressure of the camera because I am pretty straightfoward with my strong opinions and am exquisitely talented at making tactless, insensitive comments based on said opinions which may offend the masses and possibly caused me to be stoned to death by an angry mob the next time I get off the plane when I go back to Malaysia for a holiday.

[ Princess Aud ] however has expressed my sentiments to the T so pls go read her post kthx.

Australia is my home for now.

Eddie's back from Singapore

And I guess I'm not the only one who had missed him!

Nevermind the lousy pay..

It's things like these that make my day :)

Why I don't shower in the mornings

Another food post!

During Chap Goh Meh on Sunday, Uncle Vincent and his wife Cass dropped off a lovely surprise package in conjunction with my cousin Baby Elsa's 满月(full-month) celebration.



Wrapped in paper and still warm was a generous slab of succulent roast pork. I don't know where they bought it from, it was so damn good! I had barely had enough before it was all gobbled up by the ravenous boyfriend.



There was also a pretty strawberry mousse cake and half a dozen of those 'lucky red eggs' which are always a must during auspicious Chinese occasions.



Anyway I'm not a fan of hard-boiled eggs (I take mine soft-boiled), so with those being left in the fridge, I thought it'd be a good idea to whip up a Potato, bacon and egg salad :D

It took me longer than anticipated but turned out really yummy!



The magic is definitely in the mayo. I'm not a big fan of mayo but Bev and Bjorn recommended this German one called Thomy and it's pretty good.

Apart from the mayo (I used up a 235g jar), I've also chucked in:

4 hard-boiled eggs (peeled and diced into cubes), 3 desiree potatoes (boiled and diced), chopped chives, salt and black pepper (to taste), sprinkle of sugar, dash of dill, bacon (about 120g, diced, pan-fried and absorbed of excess oil), and a red apple. Yes APPLE, I kid you not. The crisp sweetness of it somehow goes really well with the creamy and savoury egg and potato!

I'd also use freshly-cracked black pepper next time if available, and a teaspoon or two of wholegrain mustard. Other than that, heaps of estimation with the other ingredients, as always. Give it a go and let me know what you think :)

Beef and Guinness stew

Eddie and I are big fans of Guinness!

It's been gloomy and rainy and chilly since the weekend, and with so much uncooked Porterhouse steak leftover from the BBQ on Friday, what better time to whip up this hearty Irish stew for dinner?



It's pretty easy to make so if anybody wants the recipe, let me know. I use a lot of estimation though, so don't trust my measurements too much! Pandai sendiri agak2 je and just season to taste :)



Alright I'm off to get myself a second helping.

Bjorn's last supper

I was deciding whether or not to call this post 'Chap Goh Mei Blues'.

Friends are your family when you're home away from home, and it is always a bit sad when someone from our closer group of friends bids farewell.

As I type, someone whom everybody is undoubtedly going to miss very much, is waiting to board his plane back to Singapore to start a brand new chapter of his life.

**(Before I continue, I must apologize in advance to any Muslim friends reading this— Non-Halal pics coming up!)



We wanted to get our favourite chef a farewell gift but didn't want it to take up precious baggage weight, so I made a simple card to wish him well.

Why we put what we put on the card is because Bjorn somehow always manages to make pork taste UNREAL. Seriously.

Like his orgasmic slow-baked pork roast during 'degustation night'...



Or his fuckin awesome orange-soda marinated pork chops during the BBQ on Friday night, barbequed to his trademark juicy and tender medium-rare pink...


(More photos of the BBQ on Facebook here.)

Last night, we went to Kyochon for his last dinner in Brisbane, as he said that Sunnybank was a place he'd definitely miss.

He was quite amused with the card! :P



Inside the card...



Pickled daikon!



I've been wanting to try out this Korean fried-chicken place ever since Julia & Brenan told us about it a while ago. Here, they serve nothing but chicken. And only two types of chicken at that! No, seriously.

So we ordered chicken. -___-"



Half soy-glazed and half spicy. OMG damn good. We devoured 2 chickens between the four of us.

Then we moved on to our favourite 豆花 place for dessert.





On the way home...



I somehow creverry made those lights look like little heart shapes! ♥



B & B dropped us home to get our car so that Bevers wouldn't have to drive us home from Moorfields.

I brought Amoebunny along, much to Bev's delight and Jess's horror at another talking soft toy in the house.



OK random pics now.

My favourite tea! 'Jasmine Dragon Pearl Green Tea with Rose' it's called.



Bjorn and the ever manja Olyn..

The others taught me how to play Munchkin Quest and I sucked at it because I suck at haggling. On top of that my head not working properly because I was up to my brains in chicken and 豆花.

Well that's it for this post, I'm off to give my parents a call. I hope everyone has a great 十五暝 and don't you forget to appreciate all your family and friends and loved ones if you are lucky enough to spend it with them. :)

Much love from Brisbane! xx

Friday tomorrow YESSSS

It's been a long day. A productive and happy day, albeit a tiring day.


Beautiful fresh banana cupcakes from Cakiepoo! ♥

I will be working full-time in two weeks. As much as I am looking forward to it, I honestly wonder if I'd be able to cope with having to wake up by 7am every morning, God help me.

A massive pimple on my face popped last night, leaving a swollen scab in between my eyes/eyebrows today which was still too fresh to pick at.



Today, a student asked if the 'thing' on my forehead was a bindi and if I was trying to be Indian or something, bless him.

And man, I am so addicted to Zuma. I'm so SICK of it already, but I cannot stop until I beat Eddie's high scores!! Rawr.



I stayed home tonight playing this shit when I was supposed to be out having dinner and catching up with Judith & Co., FML.

(... Hang on, what life?)


By the way, only four people turned up for THURSDAY NIGHT SOCCER. I can't wait till everyone is back from holidays. Watching the boys play isn't as much fun without the WAGs either.

Been itching to kick some balls too so I'm hoping we can round up enough girls sometime to book a court!

Weekend...

Gone waay too quickly :(

As usual, we kicked off our weekend with a good hearty Saturday morning breakfast..



Picked Benjamin up from the airport early this morning. The Herbert St household is complete again! :)

We had planned to do a BBQ lunch and finally put our new BBQ to use, but then it started pouring cats and dogs so we postponed it -_-

This afternoon, while watching telly, we noticed an Asian guy in a flash new-looking BMW trying to park his car outside our house. And we kept looking and looking in amusement because he had absolutely NO idea what he was doing!! He had no idea how to parallel-park a car!! He spent a good 15 minutes jerking and reversing and adjusting the car, and he kept getting out to check his progress (WHAT PROGRESS?? The fella was still one foot away from the curb and more than a car's length from the car behind him bwahaha)

I think he became self-conscious when some people came to look at the junk we put out on our lawn (it's Curbside Collection Day tomorrow, and there's been a lot of 'scavengers' checking out the stuff other people put out on their lawns to see if there's anything worth salvaging), so this guy drove off and decided to park on the opposite side of the road. Same thing - reverse, jerk forward (sometimes with his handbrake on), step out of car, step in, adjust car again.

When it looked like he's finally happy with his shitty parking, he got out, rummaged through the boot for the longest time, and fished out two bags. Closed the boot, started to walk away but glanced back at his car, decided he didn't like his parking and promptly turned back, chucked the bags back into the boot and got into the car again.

By this time Eddie and I were already contemplating taking out the folding camp chairs and sitting outside on the deck to watch this fella.

The guy decided he needed to change spots again cos the more he adjusted his car, the more its butt was jutting out, so he moved two feet up the road... and repeated the whole process again.

OMG HILARIOUS.

By the time he was done (for real) and had finally walked off and left the car, Eddie and I decided to leave a note on his windscreen to let him know how much we appreciated the entertainment! *chuckle* (We're not usually this mean. Really. This guy was just too funny to pass up!)

I wanted to wait to see the guy's reaction but I fell asleep on the couch and when I woke up, the car was gone already :(

I can bet two cents though that he's never gonna park on our street again LOL.

Okay random picture of the day cos I stink like a rafflesia and desperately need to take a shower:

Overgrown weeds on our lily patch! kthxbai.

Quickie

I haven't been in the mood to blog lately, so here's just a brief update on what's been happening.

First of all, Happy 老虎年 to everyone celebrating Chinese New Year!


Love love LOVE Rhonda's homemade CNY peanut cookies!

I've been feeling rather gloomy for having to spend yet another CNY away from home. Been missing my family so much it aches.

Last Friday, one of my colleagues, who is also Malaysian, gave me a pink makeshift angpao! So sweet of her :) It made me very happy (it's been a while since I've received an angpao)... and also very homesick.



Kookies came and Kookies went, and I miss the woman as much as I miss her awesome sausage fried rice.



For Valentine's Day, Eddie brought me out for an extravagant dinner @ Cha Cha Char where we had the best steak in the world- $85 Grade 12 Wagyu. GRADE 12 okay, highest grade on the marbling scale!! It was soooo OMFG goooood that I didn't know whether I was high from the champagne or the steak.

Thank you dahriinngggg for giving me the wonderful opportunity to know what grade 12 steak tates like Amen ♥ ♥ ♥



Oh yes I'm back to having black hair! So sick of having to fix my regrowths, and it's been almost a decade since I've had black hair. Kookies helped me DIY :)

Anyway after our awesome dinner, Eddie and I joined the rest of the 'gang' @ Moorfield for 年三十countdown~



And oh so so so happy for Yoshi & Ron, who just got engaged!!!
Three weddings this year. Gosh it's gonna be a blast :D

In contrast to the happier times, the lowlight of the week was definitely failing my driving test.



Yeah, for CLUTCH COASTING and for turning the steering wheel with one hand inside the wheel, fuck.

OK abrupt stop here, gotta pick the boyfriend up from work now so here's random pic of the day: My messy desk at work hehehe.



Btw Eddie's flying back to Singapore again next week on a business trip! Lucky bugger T_T

Kookies and kream

A little more than 7 hrs till the woman touches down in the Sunshine State.

*EXCITED* :D

I hope I don't get called in for work tomorrow morning!!

Fish head curry

What else would you do with a fish head sitting in your freezer? :)



Ingredients. I'm not the best cook when it comes to curries, so I took a short-cut and just bought fish head curry paste from Yuen's nyeheheh.

And look!



Mutated okra! :P

The curry turned out pretty gooood..



Not burn-your-tongue-make-u-cry kinda spicy (cos I cannot take spicy food FML), but spicy enough to hit the spot and make you want more!

Before this fish head was just a fish head, it looked like this:



We didn't keep this one I caught lah, we kept the one Eddie caught cos there wasn't enough space in the freezer for two.

Eddie caught a big thready too but his line snapped before he could land it :( So Mariah had to do without her threadfin salmon sashimi this time.

Anyway, we cut the jew up into three portions. Eddie cooked up the middle section a few days ago:



Pan-fried and doused in sweet sugar soy + ginger shreds fried to a crisp. Super scrumptious!

Now thinking of what to do with the tail bit. Sweet and sour?

Burn baby burn

While I'm waiting for Eddie the Phattie to come home, let me tell you what happened at work today.

Fridays = presentation days, so I had lugged the school projector and laptop up to my classroom and set it up. Its projection on the whiteboard was slanted, and because I couldn't find anything else, I took out my half-read novel and used it to prop the projector up. I used half the book to cover the lens so that a couple of the students could use the whiteboard first.

While one of my students was setting up for his presentation, he suddenly started grunting (well grunting wouldn't be the right word, but what's the right word to use to describe someone who's desperately trying to grab your attention, but in panic cannot find the words he needs in English?) and waving frantically at me as he seized my book and started huffing and puffing and fanning it.

My heart stopped for 10 seconds because my precious new book was freakin smoking and sizzling, and the bright amber patch in the middle of the page was about to burst into flames!!! The room quickly filled with the smell of burnt paper and for a brief moment there was chaos. I quickly opened the door for fear of setting off the fire alarm, but luckily there wasn't enough smoke to set it off anyway because my student managed to extinguish the sizzle just in time!! Close call or what!!! O.O"

P H E W.

So I now have holes in several pages of my book, like so:



Looks like I'm gonna have to do a bit of cloze passage reading when I get to those pages.

Goodness I am so glad I didn't start a fire and burn down the whole school. SO GLAD.

*kicks self repeatedly for being careless. Kick. KICK!*

By the way, one of my Japanese girls and her friend got attacked two nights ago as they were walking home past/from a pub in Springhill, by what sounded like drunk racists. She's going out again with some of the other students from my class tonight, and while trying to explain why she wanted someone to accompany her home, burst into tears as she showed us the big greenish bruise on her cheekbone, still apparent under layers of foundation.

I was shocked beyond words. Must be freakin traumatic can, to be attacked in a country where you don't speak its language!

I made one of the boys promise to catch the bus/taxi with her, just to make sure she gets home safely.

Bastards. I hope those people rot in hell.

Toxic

You know what? I realize I am still bitter about a lot of things.

I need to let go of the past and let it go. I need to pick myself up and stop whinging. I need to get out of this "You-owe-me" mentality before it completely destroys me.