I attended the University of Melbourne's pre departure orientation on the 18th of January! We had to arrive 2 hours before the orientation started, so I arrived at KLCC Convention Center 3 at 11.30am, with only a cup of Milo in my stomach because I woke up late. I saw Leon and Sulfya from IH there, Ruwan (Shing Yun's friend) and Kar Mun, who sulked when I ignored her (I did not recognize her since I only met her once during a barbeque at Charlene's place). We started off by making goodie bags for the students, and I started chatting to a guy who was helping the other volunteers to bag the brochures they collected since I was next to him (I arranged the bags he bagged in a box). He was a fan of Heng Lin's and was going down the same path as Heng Lin, which is Genetics. After the goodie bags were done we were given a talk then we split into our jobs (signing people in, ushering, counting heads). After that when the orientation started I hung around outside since there was nothing to do inside yet. I was kinda surprised to see Heng Lin and his parents there, since I thought he was still in Melbourne. After Amy the Malaysia-Singapore counselor gave her talk we split the students up according to course and then split them again into groups of 10 for a volunteer-students briefing. I talked for about 2 hours until I was hoarse, answering their questions about Melbourne. Then later I talked to some parents outside the hall, and only left at 5pm. I enjoyed myself very much at the orientation and did not realise I had nothing to eat the whole day.

Chinese New Year is fun as well as boring. Fun because I get to meet relatives that I don't get to meet during the rest of the year, and boring because the old routine of chotaiti and blackjack is well, getting boring.

This year, as usual, started with the reunion dinner. My uncle came back from Singapore, and it was good to see him again. I felt kind of sad when he said that one must learn violin at a young age in order to reach the professional level. There goes my chance of learning violin! Then all the youngsters (me, my brother, and my cousins Helena and Alvin and their cousin Henry) went to the computer/piano/storeroom to play games and surf the net. This time round I brought my laptop there, so that we wouldnt fight over the 2 computers and my cousin Alex's laptop :P

Picture stolen from my cousin's blog!! hehehe

The first day of Chinese New Year was normal. Cousins did not invite their friends over, so there was less people. Usually many people like to visit my grandmother's house to eat her keropok udang and savor the many dishes she and my aunt cook. My aunt also makes really good peanut biscuits and assorted cookies. Whereas my mom has promised 5 years ago to make a quiche with me but until now I haven't seen any. In fact, I always thought quiche was a kind of fruit tart (the ones with kiwis and strawberries and grapes and with custard) until one day IH served up a bacon and egg quiche. My second cousins which I had not seen for two years also came over. When Shyuen finally gets round to putting up the *current generation* portraits up on Facebook then I can post some pictures of us girls camwhoring. At night Alex drove us cousins and my uncle to Cheras for some pool.

Second day started off with Alvin annoying me. He keep wanting to play chotaiti with money, even though me and Helena did not let him. Reason: he's too young, even though by his age we were gambling already :P We went off to KL Sogo while my cousins' family left to go back to their other hometown. We ate at Siang Seafood Restaurant in Sogo (excellent service, great food, killer prices) as my uncle wanted to eat dim sum. I recommended that place because the last time I was there Shing Yun's mother treated us to dim sum and it tasted really nice.

Halfway through the shopping my grandmother said Kam Poh asked us to go to her place near KL, so we hurried there. We had to go up a winding road leading to the top of the hill to get to Aunt Me Li's place, who is Kam Poh's daughter. Apparently I havent seen this branch of the family for more than 10 years, since Aunt's Me Li's brother married ten years ago (he has 2 kids now). They expected me to be a small cute little girl, but I've already grown beyond that :P I got very excited when I heard Aunt Me Li and her husband are chartered accountants; I ended up following them round the whole time, asking lots and lots of questions. Their answers enlightened me and my interest in Accountancy was revived. I want to do be like them, who loves their jobs and is still interested in it.

Busy playing PS3

Chatting away

A beautiful picture...

Once we got back at night my grandmother said that I left my handphone at their place and I got a scolding from my mother. I just totally forgot about my handphone at that time since I was busy. Anyway, my cousin took out the mahjong set and me, Helena and my bro played mahjong while my grandmother grumbled that small kids shouldn't play. My mother watched as we played and said "How come you all know how to play I also don't know how to..? I must learn next time!" I won the first few rounds because I managed to remember what I learnt from last CNY and I last played with Ian and Luxian once 6 months ago while the others last played last year at CNY. Then the luck changed and favored my cousin, although I managed to win again after a few rounds. My sneaky brother saw I was winning, and when I left the room for a minute he stole my seat for the *good luck*.

Tomorrow my relatives are coming over for a house visit, so more updates in a few days!

The chocolate cake I baked. Yum!

I so badly want to blog but I wasn't sure what to blog about. In the end, I decided to blog about my foodie experiences here. I still have the restaurant reviews I used to submit to the IH Globe last year, so I'll post it up one by one. Of course, I've tried more restaurants than I've ever written about, but I never bothered to write about it. If you do go to Melbourne however, I'll gladly bring you on a foodie tour of good places to eat =)

I've gotten a job at Taipan, near my house. It's an accounting cum secretary firm, and although both are separate firms it's in the same office. There are only four people working there: the owner, two permanents and me. I mostly handle secretarial stuff like filing, photostating and modifying documents, but just recently they've taught me to use UBS, an accounting software. That brings my knowledge of acct software up to 3 programs - I'm so proud of it :P

A surprise awaited me in the spam section of my mail yesterday. As usual, I browsed through the spam to check out if any legit mail accidentally got in there. I stared at the words Peter Grant Cole and your room allocation for a minute before I realised that omg, they're actually sending out our room info for next year!!!!!!!! In IH, at the end of the year we'd tote up our room points (gained from participating in college activities, sports and doing well in studies), survey the rooms we're aiming for the next year, write down our preferences (I put down about 25 rooms!) and then hand it in. Then just wait for the results. It's quite a fun process, especially if you're applying for the best rooms in the college. No one has any idea of who their opponents are for the room, so getting the results is the only way to know whether you got it or not. I stared at the words room 53 for a bit before checking out the IH portal for which room is that.

Anyway, this is the first restaurant review I did for the IH Globe - I usually write the themed articles. My best and most enjoyed article is still The Fresher's Guide to IH. Enjoy.

Vina Bar

Vina Bar, located at 253 Lygon St, is a rather small, unassuming restaurant. However, it has an extensive menu to cater to meatarians and vegetarians alike. I had the Grilled Pork Vermicelli, whilst my friends had the Beef Soup Noodles and the Vermicelli with Rice Paper Rolls. The soup from the beef noodles was flavourful and tasty. The vermicelli noodles come with tangy peanut sauce, chilli sauce and tasty mint leaves. The prices are a little bit higher than the average, but the generous portions make up for the price. Prices range from $8 to $13.

Happy (belated) New Year!

Nothing much over the last few weeks. Mostly I've been going around with Stephanie, shopping for Xmas presents. We went all over the place, although mostly to Pyramid (what can I say? it's the nearest...). We did make an excursion to Sungai Wang (my first time there). The food court there trumps AsiaCafe in terms of entertainment and prices. There were many big, flat screen tvs all over the place, showing a variety of channels (Jackie Chan on one, football on another). Sungai Wang wasn't all it was said to be, although the variety of goods sold there impressed me.

Korean lunchbox

Besides that I met up with some of my classmates from Taylors. We were the girls who mostly sat in front of class, with a little tinge of nerdism surrounding us. We were pretty sarcastic to each other, but it was more funny than hurtful. The three of us met up at Pyramid (...again) although Lean See wasn't there as she couldn't get a bus ticket from Penang. Went to 3JC and then walked around window shopping.

Look at the sparks between them!They made up long enough for me to take a picture...

My schedule has been pretty much booked for the weekends now. This weekend I'll be spending a night at Shing Yun's house, head to Sogo the next day with her and then go for the E4 class reunion at night. Next weekend will be the Melb uni pre-departure orientation at KLCC, and maybe a gathering.

E4 reunion: 7pm, Chillies at 1U. Contact me to confirm attendance. Please help to inform/remind your fellow classmates!

To Steph, Loh, Soo Gee, and whoever else who reads this who knows Bay, he's coming back on the 16th. And he wants a gathering. Contact me for the details.