salsa high

Surprise, surprise!? I didn’t move today.? We managed to get the 2 bedroom apartment which means that our original bank cheque had to be changed.? That just meant that we’d have to spend more time at the bank while slow old Michele helped us with it, not to mention the additional $35 admin fee.? I was actually looking forward to living alone for a while, but oh well, I guess I’ll have to see how this works out.? Anyway, the good news is I’ll be moving tomorrow, barring anything unforeseen.

School today was not too bad actually.? I had 4 straight hours of lessons – tiring, but manageable.? The first one taught us to use various library tools to search for information.? It lasted a really long 2 hours – they really could have condensed that one a bit.? I mean, how much time do you really need to spend learning how to search for books or journals.? The second and final lesson was about clinical communication skills.? The tutor told us all to get hold of this textbook by Silverman.? Ridiculous!? Textbooks here already cost a bomb and seriously, who learns communication skills through a textbook.? Isn’t it supposed to be experiential?? Bleah, unfortunately for my pocket, she made it compulsory for us to read the first chapter, and thanks to my newfound library searching skills, the book won’t be available till much much later and so it looks like I have to scrimp and save again – not that I am not already.? The lesson wasn’t too bad;?we got to reflect upon ourselves and things like that, which I find really difficult.? See, I have difficulty remembering specific things when given something general to recall.? Like I’m supposed to recall an experience I’ve had when I felt like I wasn’t getting through to a person.? I think that’s going to be a problem for me.? Furthermore, I was supposed to recall my feelings…? Need I mention that I am a guy!? I have no feelings!? So yeah, in the end I had to make some things up because EVERYONE gets a chance to talk (read:?everyone must talk).? I really don’t understand how people do these things so quickly.? The goal is to become a reflective practitioner.? I have serious doubts about?my ability to become that.

Studying up on bio hasn’t been too bad.? I’ve found wikipedia to be my good friend.?I actually understand what wikipedia says more than Sean’s bio notes.? Ironic.? I’m having fun with it anyway, so no complaints there.? Goodness, I’ve been complaining so much…

I’ve still yet to salsa.? I think I’ll start next week after med camp and all.? Speaking of which, lizzie had convinced me to go for med camp, so I’ll be quite absent from Friday to Sunday.? I’ll take a textbook along – not to study, really to deal with the guilt of not staying at home to study.? That’s lizzie’s idea anyway…? I love her so much!

Today was really one of the more trying days, certainly not the worst, but bad enough.? First, lessons started proper today?and I didn’t know where my first class was.? To make matters worse, I reached the university only 5 minutes before class started and had to run to the library to check my timetable – the woes of having everything online and charging exorbitantly for printing.? Thankfully, I wasn’t the last one to reach class, there were many other poor lost souls wandering the corridors looking for their rooms.? The first lesson was a small group session, which introduced us to the concept of having small group sessions, haha.? It became more of a “getting to know you” session than an actual lesson.? We did get to discussing things like the competencies we were supposed to possess when we graduate but in an indirect fashion.? The tutor in charge of the session got us to talk about positive and negative experiences we’ve had with the health service and from there got into our graduate capabilities, which was really interesting.? Unfortunately though, I couldn’t see the powerpoint slides because my stupid spectacles died on me.? The lens came off and disappeared into thin air.? Sickening.

After the small group session, I took a stroll down to the campus’ health center in hopes of getting those damned specs fixed but was refered to the optometry clinic (I didn’t know they had one around).? Apparently it’s a clinic run by students but supervised by trained professionals.? Because I didn’t have a prescription (stupid, stupid), I had to make an appointment to get my eyes checked.? And the only day they could give me was MONDAY next week.? Bleah, but at least it’s free for students.? I can’t have everything I suppose.

We had 2 lectures afterwards in the law theatre (hahaha).? Both of them were really interesting and for once I didn’t have the urge to fall asleep.? The lecturers made the session really interesting and it was extremely refreshing compared to those horrible ones back in JC.? I had to be seated right in front due to my horrible vision without spectacles, and even so, the words were still blurry which got me really frustrated at some point.? Frustrating and refreshing.? I realise my use of language is really bland right now but I’m trying to type all this very quickly.? I’m still using the internet at that internet cafe and it’s really starting to burn a hole.

I cooked again.? We had chicken breast again but this time I marinated the chicken in apple juice and then cooked the meat in a skillet before pouring some more apple juice to simmer.? It tasted really bland so I sprinkled some herbs I’d bought and it became really tasty.? Anyway Sean burnt the garlic in the fried rice so umm…? the food really complimented each other in a sense (light chicken and heavy burnt garlic).

I’m really getting worried about whether I can catch up with these bunch of smarties in medicine.? I don’t possess their vast amount of knowledge in biology, so I have to work really hard.? I think I might skip med camp to look through textbooks and lecture notes for the upcoming week of microbiology lectures, as well as revise cell structures, DNA and cell division.? These are things everyone already knows but I have only a faint idea about.? Perhaps once I get my own place I can really sit down and study without distractions.? I don’t mind living with other people, really, but some times I wish my housemates would just kill the music and let me study.? I just need some peace and quiet for the time being…? I didn’t get my parents to pay so much money for me to fall behind right at the start.? I know the start isn’t counted, but I don’t want to have a bad start either.? After all, the module is called “foundations” and I want to get that right.? Looks like some things will have to change…

Well, it’s Monday and I’m still not in my new apartment yet.? I missed my appointment with the housing office this morning and they’re very very busy so now I can only move on Wednesday.? It’s a small hiccup, but I think it’ll be fine.? It was mildly irritating though, the housing office called this morning at 9am telling?Sean that?we had an appointment with them now but?we didn’t recall that a time was specified, we thought it was just a simple handing over of keys and signing of some documents that didn’t require much time an appointment.? Anyway, Sean told me that they were threatening to give our place to someone else if we didn’t turn up today so, feeling very pissed off I left the lecture hall (it was a really boring orientation lecture anyway) to confront Graham.? Of course it was later cleared up that they weren’t being rude, because the exact words that they asked were “Do you still want the apartment?” because people miss appointments for that.? Unfortunately, that wasn’t communicated to me by Sean so I thought they were being really mean.? Bleah, I missed?my first?lecture (boring but still…) and didn’t get anything out of that.? Ugh.? But we’re moving on Wednesday anyway so I guess it’s ok.? Bleah, I have to sleep on the damn sofa for another 2 days.

Anyway, the rest of the day was pretty much a monotony; introductions to our clinical and scenario groups and getting ourselves oriented with the buildings.? There was supposed to be a barbeque but I skipped that because, well, it was raining and I had a craving for some salad (yes, I really love that now – it just tastes better here, don’t ask me why).? Speaking of food, I cooked for dinner today and everyone loved my “fried” chicken.? It was supposed to be fried but the oil wasn’t hot enough and so it was more like just cooked chicken.? But it was really tasty nonetheless and everyone loved it, and that’s the important part, other than the always refreshing ego massage.? Haha.? 😀

The weekend was really fun.? A bunch of us medicine people and my current landlord went down to Bondi beach for some fun in the sun.? We had so much fun flinging ourselves against the waves till uh, yeah, some of us got pulled by the current really far away from the shore and would have drowned but thank goodness the surfers were there to help.? I almost got myself into that situation too.? I had suddenly noticed that my feet weren’t touching the ground any more and I decided to head back.? But despite trying really hard to swim back, I wasn’t making much progress.? I was getting really scared because the waves kept going over my head, which made me choke on the salty water and tired because I was just swimming so hard.? But I soon realised that I just had to let the wave carry me to shore and just pull really hard when the current was pulling me out to sea.? I was so relieved when I hit shore.? But then I turned back and my friends looked like they were in trouble.? I heard one of them scream “help” and I decided to go back and get them.? But I saw some alert surfers moving towards them and decided to let them handle the job.? Really scary still, I didn’t know if I would have survived saving them.? But it was an invaluable experience anyway.? The rest of the morning saw us lying on top of beach towels and getting tan.? I called lizzie and got her all jealous.? Ironically, we saw the sign that said “dangerous currents” while we were leaving the beach, plus, a lifeguard drove by with a loudhailer telling everyone to stay away from this part of the beach because of the strong currents.? A bit late.? So that was how I spent Saturday.? In the evening, I went to King’s Cross and haha, had a really good educational experience.? Really cool, the things they have there.? But of course I did nothing.? I did have a few drinks there though.? $14 per jug of Heineken!!!? To a Singaporean, that’s incredibly cheap.? Yeap, so that’s how my night ended – with alcohol.? :D? I love this place!

It’s been about a week since I left Singapore for Sydney and things are still looking good.? I have some good news – I’ve managed to find permanent accommodation!? It’s along High Street, which is just next door to my faculty’s building.? Literally, next door.? Unfortunately, though, I’ve been evicted from the lodge I’ve been putting up at, the lady at the lodge gave me this lousy reason that the lodge will be fully booked from the time I originally had intended to leave till moving day, which incidentally is on Monday.? So I’ve been putting up with this Air Force guy who lives at this nice apartment in Cogee.? Ironically, this was the apartment I rejected in a previous post.? So I’ll be staying there for a few days till I get the keys for the High St apartment.? The guy doesn’t have a phone line set up yet, so I’ll have to call lizzie with my handphone for the time being I guess and bleah, my $30 pre-paid card just ran out of value.? International calls are SOO expensive in Sydney, but that’s not too surprising I suppose.? Stupid stupid stupid.? I’ve got to somehow use a calling card to call her.? The expense is killing me but I can’t do without calling her either.? I really need a land line soon.? Oh and he doesn’t have internet up yet so I’m typing this from an internet cafe that charges $4 an hour!? Ugh.? Disgusting…? Seriously, I don’t know how people here cope with the high taxes and expensive services.

Lessons will start next week and I’ve been assigned a hospital.? Due to some really really bad luck, I’ve been assigned the furthest hospital from the uni (you win some, you lose some).? It’s 40km away and according to google maps, it’s an hour’s drive.? I daren’t imagine how long it would take by train and bus.? Really scary stuff.? Hopefully I can mug or something on the train (while trying hard not to get mugged).? But still…

It’s been almost a week since ty left and its finally starting to sink into me, that we won’t be doing many things together for a while….The past week (excluding the New Year holidays) was spent basically hibernating at home and spacing out. I read comics, cleared my auction stuff, finally installed itunes in my laptop, played SIMS and cleaned my room. I haven’t been to Xen for almost 2 weeks. I suppose I’m guilty of avoiding going there, since that place brings back so many memories. But still, I do miss dance…after watching Dance Floor….I probably should start going for lessons again.

Life over here would seem mundane, as compared to what ty is experiencing over at Sydney. But I’m still going to blog, simply because both of us look forward to reading what is going on in each other’s lives, miles apart. I’ll probably be going for some retail therapy this weekend with my best buddy. It always helps. But then again, I had already blasted $199 on an SK diamond pendant for myself last week and splurged $XXX on ty’s birthday present (nevermind that his birthday is in May..). Yeah, retail therapy works wonders for me. 🙂

I’m terribly sorry I haven’t been able to post the pictures of downtown Sydney earlier but I’ve been so busy with orientation and stuff.? But I think orientation for me at least is starting to wind down quite a bit so I’ll probably have more time to post.? I’d like to also?note that the internet connection at the lodge isn’t the best so it’s quite hard for me to get all the pictures up at once.? Nevertheless, here they are.

So this is how downtown looks like when you step out of the train…

Downtown’s got this interesting mix of old colonial buildings and massive glass skyscrapers.? Very cool.

It’s got interesting architecture…

…a piece of home…

…and a beautiful piece of home…

Anyway, so after shopping for a while in the CBD (window shopping, things are way too ex) and the main shopping strip (Pitt Street), I headed over to the Sydney harbour place, whatever it’s called, the place with the opera house, and I took these wonderful pics from “The Rocks”.

The famous opera house!

A museum of sorts…? I really don’t know what it is, but it looks pretty…

And a picture of the skyline.

There was this really interesting speed boat ride where the driver did these very cool drifts that sent water splashing all over.? We all got wet but it was great fun.? The cool thing was that the water evaporated almost immediately so we weren’t wet for long.? Nice dry hot weather it was.? Anyway the speedboat ride was probably the highlight of the day, it was extremely informative (Russell Crowe’s house costs a bomb but totally sucks, yeap, I saw it), and the guide was just so funny.? They really do the humour thing here well.? I’d highly recommend the ride to everyone, it’s $55 but worth every cent.? Unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to bring my camera on board so I couldn’t snap any pictures.? Fortuntely, though, I did manage to snap more pictures from the opera house side.

I got the harbour bridge on camera!? Really pretty looking thing.? There are people at the top.? Wave at them and they wave back.

Here’s the opera house…

…and a close up!

We also took some pictures of this park that’s right beside the opera house.? I’m not too sure how it’s like inside because I didn’t get a chance to get in, but from the outside it looks sweet…

People lying on the grass…? You don’t see this in Singapore…? Notice that the grass is mildly greener…

On the way to the opera house we heard this group of jazz musicians playing some really nice music at the opera house cafe.? They were really really really good and I loved them so much I took this pic…

Some really cool guys…

So that’s the end of my deluge of pictures.? I’ll probably be posting less pictures now that school has started a little bit and I don’t have too many chances to take nice pictures.? I’ll still be doing updates regularly, of course, hopefully.? I just got the time table, it doesn’t look TOO bad…

i woke up this morning to the sound of my handphone vibrating. Although it was 6.28am and my eyelids felt like lead, I had a feeling it was ty. So i struggled to get up and?read the text message (nevermind that I was only half awake and quite blind w/o my glasses). And I was right, it was Ty! And after miraculously wording a?reply in perfect spelling, I dropped back to sleep with the phone in my hand…and didnt wake up till 9am. 😛

?By 10.30am, we were out of the house, all decked out in our Chinese New year finery and ready to start the visiting. After the second stop, which was at my paternal grandpa’s place, I was already yawning…And it wasnt even 1pm yet….Must be the lack of sleep…We visited 5 places today and got home at around 5.30pm. I was beat….but still managed to spare 10 min to count my ‘ang pao’ collections for the day. $450 today!! Not too bad for the first round. 😛 There’s still 2nd round tonight and of course 3rd round tomorrow. I love new year. But then again I have to save $$ to visit Ty in April and Sep.

I’m so excited to go over in April! The initial pain of separation has subsided…simply because we both know that it is temporary. And a separation means there’s a reunion! Plus he’s showing me these lovely pictures of sydney and he’s calling me to tell me about the things he sees over there. I’ve already booked my ticket to go over in early April and I’m just counting down the days! Btw, I forgot to mention about the lovely blue roses he gave me on Valentine’s day, just before he left. Last year, he gave me 6 pink roses plus 1 blue rose, right in the middle of the bouquet. Apparently he had already ordered 6 pink roses but cos it was our first Valentine’s day, he wasnt sure which colour roses I liked. And when he asked and I told him blue, he went on a last min mad rush to try to get one. Haha, he told me the threatned the florist…so that’s the story of the single blue rose.
?????????????????? Aren’t they pretty!! 😛

Today was another long day of walking.? I went down to the main shopping district and yes, things are even more expensive there, although the books, especially the cooking books are cheaper.? For Borders, at least.

After having this HUGE kebab which I honestly thought was small from the picture, I went down to the Sydney Opera House (proper noun right?).? There I had some fun with this really cool boat ride.? We just happened to be there at the right time and the right place and got on to the boat while it was just about to leave.? The boat was really fast and the driver did these amazing sudden turns that sent water splashing all over the deck.? Really cool.? We had to hang on tight of course.? After hanging around some more at the opera house, we were beat and headed back to the lodge.

I’ll be posting pictures tomorrow I think, I’m way too tired…? Orientation starts tomorrow!

I couldn’t get to use the net much last night because the wireless signal kept going down so I couldn’t post the pictures.? But now I can!? So here are some pics of UNSW on a very quiet Saturday.

This is some pretty looking sculpture in front of some building whose name I’ll soon learn I hope in one of the few open spaces of the campus.

Notice the crow on the left side of the picture.? The crow really is quite far away and the only reason you can see it on this picture is because it’s HUGE!? Some kind of mutated bird, goodness.

That bird is the size of a cat!? Singaporean wildlife seems so tame…

Then I started taking pictures of some of the buildings in the uni, starting with the library:

Entrance to the library.? It doesn’t look much but check out the next picture…

The entire library building.? Big, bleah.

So then I went down and took some pretty pictures of the quadrangle:

The little sign at the bottom says “No ball games”.? Ahem.

There’s a clock tower in the university too.? And it’s a sundial!

Then of course there’s the Scientia that’s on every UNSW brochure…

The Scientia’s pretty, but there’s this weird sculpture thing just below it and I’ll call it the…

…ball.

Well, anyway after taking that long trek in UNSW, I went to Darling Harbour. But that wasn’t before we passed through Chinatown.? Which brings me to this – what’s with this obsession about going to Chinatown every time there is one in a foreign city…? It’s the same cheena stuff everywhere…? However, thankfully, I did find something interesting…

Like OMG KMT!!!? Yeah and if you look closely, it’s right above this shop called “Chinese Ginseng and Herbs Co”.

Yeap, and we got to see…

Chinese Gardens…? But it was closed, so all we got to see were…

…the entrance and…

…the walls…

Darling harbour wasn’t all that interesting, really.? I mean, I was only interested enough to take 2 photos…

The sign and…

…the accompanying shopping center…

Yeap, so that was it.? Oh, I almost forgot…? While I was outside UNSW I smelt something really shitty, I looked around and guess what I found?

Horseys!!!

Well I’m feeling better now.? I guss it was just a lack of sleep that triggered my depression.? I still miss lizzie and the pain is still there but it doesn’t hurt that bad now.

Anyway it’s 3 in the afternoon and my parents are asleep so I thought I’d just quickly chronicle the day till now.? Today’s a Saturday and the streets of suburban Randwick were fairly crowded in the morning, which is quite a contrast to yesterday when the street were rather empty.? I took some time this morning and got myself an Optus pre-paid card.? I think it’s fairly reasonable for $30.? Unfortunately, it expires in 30 days so it’s quite similar to a real plan.? Mobile plans here are more expensive.

I took a look at this apartment near where I’m putting up at but it’s in the middle of a shopping area and very noisy so I think that’s out.? There are some really nice places around here but it’s Saturday afternoon and all the viewings are over.? I did see this spanking new development.? I love the design, glass all over the place but the apartments for lease are way too expensive, $680 a week for?a 2 room apartment.? I saw these apartments run by the uni.? It’s still being renovated and Sean and I are on the waiting list because they haven’t completed the renovations!? We’re really hoping to get that one.? It’s right outside the medicine faculty and the rooms are of the right size and everything’s just perfect.

Which brings me to the university.? I took some time late morning to explore the university.? It was really quiet today and there were only a few people on campus, which was great, coz I brought my camera and I got to take many pretty pictures. :D? I’ll be posting them up tonight I hope.

Anyway I got my internet up (I was leeching off someone’s network last night, I hope that’s not illegal here, haha).? I paid $10 for unlimited access for a day.? Expensive, but internet here is expensive too.? Everything’s expensive here, especially food.? Don’t get me wrong, meat and dairy products are dirt cheap here ($2.96 for 2 pieces of sirloin???) but somehow the cost of eating outside can set me back quite a bit.? I just had this vegetarian sandwich that cost me $7.? Granted, it’s delicious (as in seriously so bloody good that if I were on death row, I probably wouldn’t mind having that for my last meal) and the servings are humongous, it just seems like they could lower the price a bit for us poor university students.? Say serve smaller portions because I seriously wouldn’t mind having just half of that sandwich for half the price because that would be enough for a good hearty lunch.? I dunno, I guess expensive eat-out food is something I have to get used to.

I’ll be going down town later I think.? I wish lizzie could be here with me to explore the town.