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!