Leaving Sydney

Well, it's here, the eve before I leave Sydney.

I'm still busy cleaning my room and trying to stuff all my junk into what little space provided by my suitcases and bags. I still haven't vacuumed my room, there's still clutter everywhere, and I'm getting sleepy. In all honesty, I opened the window to start blogging slightly before 3 am, and now it's 20 minutes to 6 am. And I am still not finished. And I haven't slept.

I suppose it's a good time to look back on the year that had been, and appreciate every moment here in Sydney. I have been lucky enough to meet good friends, and that has added so much fun to every experience. I have been given a superb room, exceeding my biggest expectations, and I know my room is very much a part of the reason I like it here. I have visited Melbourne and Canberra, and these are just the cherry atop the icing: I would have been more than satisfied to just remain within and enjoy everything Sydney has to offer. I have experienced many things that have given me much joy and happiness: watching a concert at the Sydney Opera House, having afternoon tea in a quaint little cottage amidst falling autumn leaves, living amidst an international community, looking down from a cliff and taking in the breeze, and oh so many more I can't possibly list everything down (I could, but it would take a really long time).

Indeed, all memories that will last me a lifetime of laughter, amusement, and wistfulness.

Goodbye, Sydney. You've been very good to me.

1 day left!

Ouch. So it's finally come to this: tomorrow will be my last full day in Sydney, and it'll be filled with nothing but rush, rush, rush! I still have so many things to do, and so little time to do them in! I still haven't finished with clearing my junk and cleaning my room, I've still got a whole mountain of library books to scan and return, I've still got to take care of all the official stuff that's left, and I have a final lunch gathering with what's left of my friends!

But anyway, this time I thought I'd blog about my experience at the Sydney Opera House last Saturday! What a great day: I went a little earlier so I'd be able to relax and not panic, so I arrived almost a couple of hours (maybe even more) before the actual event was scheduled to start. But I had a good time, going around and snapping some pictures:

I visited the beautiful toilets quite a few times (they're seriously one of the prettiest I've seen!), and also dropped into the souvenir shop to pick up a few random items. And then it was time for the pre-concert briefing at 7.15 pm, so I followed the crowd and ended up listening to some guy talk about the music we were about to hear, with glass of chardonnay in hand (AUD$8, but ooooh, it was so fun cos everyone was all posh with their dresses and glasses and all!). And then at 8 pm it was time to enter the Concert Hall and enjoy the wonders of the Tchaikovsky Spectacular!!!! Seriously, the moment you step inside, you can almost feel the excitement and thrill in the air, cos the first thing you hear is the sound of the orchestra tuning their instruments, and the anticipation gave me goosebumps! Cameras and the like aren't actually allowed inside the Concert Hall, so all pictures below were taken illegally, muahahahahaha!

I put away my trusty Pentax when the music started though, so there are no pictures of the actual performance. The repertoire for the night (with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra being led by conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy) started off with Finlandia (not by Tchaikovsky, but by Sibelius, who wrote the piece when they were under Russian rule or something, and since Tchaikovsky was Russian, well, I'm sure you see the link), then moved on to the highlight of the night, Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, which was performed superbly by James Ehnes, the solo violinist. Then it was the break, in which I tried to go to the toilet but to no avail cos the queues were just so long: I ended up getting James Ehnes' latest CD and getting his autograph!!!! Then it was back to the Concert Hall, and time for the Sleeping Beauty! Ah, I felt so happy when they played the famous waltz, at one point in time, I just leaned back in my chair, breathed deep, and took in the whole sight and sound. It's still kinda hard for me to register the fact that I'm here in Sydney, at the grand Opera House, catching a concert. Now that was a mega achievement.

And that's it, people. I'll have one last blogpost tomorrow, and then then next post after that will be written from Malaysia. Sad and happy, but oh well, c'est la vie! Cheers, people!

2 days left!

I really don't know where the time has gone. I only have 2 days left before flying back to Malaysia, and I suppose I'm happy and sad at the same time. Anyway, today I went to DFO at Homebush, and I had to take the train and bus to get there. Here are some pictures of today's outing, which took more or less 4 hours in all. You can see they've even put up Christmas trees inside Central Station.

And if you haven't known by now, I've had to find my own food source for the past 3 weeks, as the kitchen is not operating during the summer holidays. There entire place is literally quiet and there are no laughs, screams, and the like. Quite peaceful, really, but at times it can get quite creepy and lonely. Sometimes I go out and eat (like in Broadway), but occasionally I cook. Well, actually I cook quite often in my little kitchen, and I guess I've 'improved' my cooking skills. Like the time I cooked hainanese chicken rice from scratch. As in none of that stir-through sauces you get in bottles, but I actually hiked it all the way to Chinatown to get chicken, garlic, ginger, chilli, coriander, chicken stock cubes, kecap manis, sesame oil and the like. It came out pretty good, even if I do say so myself! Take a look:

Looks good, hey? I'm especially proud of this because I made everything from scratch, even the chilli condiment (the colourful one) and the garlic ginger condiment (not the belachan though, that's from a jar you can get at the Asian supermarket at Chinatown). The rice as well, that's hard work, people!!!! But I'm generous, and I'm willing to cook it for anyone who wants to give it a go! Muahahahaha! And I also managed to cook some lamb, and it came out tasting pretty good as well! I don't know why, but lamb seems to be quite cheap here, like, I can get a couple of reasonable cuts of lamb (don't know what part, all I know is it tastes good and I like it) for a couple of dollars. Sure, you have to pay more if you want the choicest cuts and no bones, but hey, a little bone is good, and you get to suck up the marrow, yum yum! I mixed mustard, soy sauce, honey, and a whole bunch of random ingredients lying around, sizzled it on the non-stick pan (don't cook it too long, minimize turning the meat over and over). The mini sausages are called pork chipolatas.

Yummy! Again, anyone up for a go, just lemme know! (hey, that even rhymes!) And one times I had some leftover chicken wings lying around so I decided to make fried chicken! And I fried up some rice too, which always tastes good! Check it out:

So you see, I've had quite a bit of fun experimenting around with food! And I suppose it saves some moolah, cos these ingredients are comparatively cheaper than eating just one meal out and all.

And that's it for this time, hopefully I'll be able to squeeze in a couple more blogposts before I fly back home! Cheers, y'all!

P.S. You guys heard/read the news about Hugh Jackman getting injured???

I turn 25 in Sydney!

Wow does time pass quickly. It seems like only yesterday I was leaving for Sydney, and now, in just a matter of days, I'll be back home. I know I haven't been blogging at all the past month, and there are many reasons for this: firstly, at times I actually forgot I had a blog; secondly, I was too lazy; and thirdly, in all honesty, I guess I just didn't feel like blogging about my last days here in Sydney.

But this I have to blog about: my 25th birthday!

That's right, it was my birthday today, so I decided to celebrate by going to Nando's at Broadway. All by myself. Very lonely, and while I ate my quarter chicken (extra hot!) and spicy rice (not spicy!) and drank my little bottle of Coke, I couldn't help feeling really sad. Bittersweet. But still, this past year has been a great experience, and it's interesting, celebrating your birthday alone in a foreign land. Here are some pictures from my birthday 'celebration', and the saddest part (or funniest and funnest, depending on how you see it) was having to ask one of the staff to snap a picture of me and my meal.

And that's it from me, people. I'll blog more tomorrow, and try to bring you all up to what I've been doing these past few weeks. Cheers!

And happy birthday to me!!!! Muahahahaha!

And now I can breathe...

... because I've finally completed all my essays for this semester!!!! Given, I've prolly still got to go over the last essay and tweak it here and there, but on the whole, I'm officially on my holidays! *wild applause* I started work on my fourth essay at 11 pm last night and worked all the way to approximately 3 in the morning. I wanted to blog about that historic moment, but the 'Net seemed to be down the whole of last night so I couldn't go online. But here it is, 10 hours later, but it's still great news, muahahahahaha! I'm going to the computer lab after this to print out my 3rd essay (which is due at 5 pm today), and then going to campus to (1) return my library books, (2) hand in my 3rd essay at my faculty, (3) maybe take some snaps of the jacaranda at the Quad, and (4) if the student market thingy is open at Jane Foss Russell Building, browse through the stalls! So I'm off, and cheers, people! Yarooh!!!!

Friends & Food!

So it's been a very busy past few days. It's officially the start of study vacation (STUVAC) today, and everyone's cramming for exams now. IH has a rather sober air, every spare space is being taken up by scowling, short-tempered students. Or maybe the sober air is just a figment of my imagination, cos I've been doing very little work and a whole lot of play!

On Saturday, a whole bunch of us (Emila, Lisa, Sarah, Yu Ning, Su-Wen, Marian, Sherry, Neil, Andy, Jake and myself) went to some karaoke place in the city called Big Echo. It was AUD$12 per person, and I was so excited cos this was the first time I'd gone karaoke-ing! I have no idea how long we were there, 4 hours? I had lotsa fun screaming though, especially our 'finale song', Aerosmith's I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing, which is a song that I've always wanted to sing in public (I didn't even realize I'd wanted to sing this in public!) and it's gonna go down in my memory as a song choke full of good times and hysterical laughter. By the end of the karaoke session, my voice was hoarse!

Then we walked back to George Street cos there was this Vietnamese place we wanted to try out called Pho Pasteur. I first read of the place while browsing around on the 'Net for nice eateries to try out, and I think this is the only Vietnamese place listed on The Sydney Morning Herald's list of The 50 Things Every Sydney Food Lover Should Try (click on the link to check it out, Pho Pasteur is at number 28). So I managed to convince everyone to try it out, and we all trooped into the tiny place (it was really quite small, especially after we took up the whole middle portion of the shop and pushed together goodness knows how many tables to fit all 13 of us - Junya and Robert came to join us for dinner too). The place smelled a little funky and wasn't quite the cleanest on the block, but boy, was the pho fantastic! I had the special beef pho (small for AUD$10) and the texture of the pho is just something you have to try to understand! It was slippery and thinner and smoother than kway teow, and the soup tasted very similar to the gu bak mee broth back home, only this one was clear. There were juicy thin slices of beef as well, and to our delight, beef tendon! And what made it more interesting was the little plate of raw bean sprouts, basil (I think) and lemon wedges that accompanied each pho dish (you add them to your pho). I'm definitely gonna have more pho, but maybe I'll try the other Vietnamese shop next to it, which, according to Neil and Sarah, is better. Can't wait to try it out!

Then on Sunday I met up with Joo, my Korean friend who'd stayed temporarily at IH at the very beginning of the first semester. We'd previously met up for coffee at the beginning of this semester, and since we'd soon be saying our goodbyes, we thought it would be fun to meet one last time. I met her at Newtown, and we decided to have Thai for lunch, so we went to Newtown Thai II (yeah, they have like 2 branches not far from each other cos they're apparently that popular) and as usual, I had the fried rice with chicken, extra spicy, for AUD$6.50 (cheap cos of the lunch special, I'd prolly end up eating at Thai places lots after IH stops serving food). After lunch we dropped into a quaint coffee place cum hippie-vibe eatery (I think it's called Urban Bites) for smoothies. I had the one with the mash-up of berries (strawberries, blueberries and some other berry, maybe raspberry).

And today I had my very last lecture ever, and it's supposed to be STUVAC and all, but we had the Labour Day holiday about a month back and that meant we had to push everything back one week, thus explaining today's class. It was quite a sad affair, cos it's been a fantastic two semesters here at USyd, and it's always sad to say goodbye to a good thing. I even managed to take some snaps of the room we were in (it looks a lot like some boardroom, we have our classes some other place) and with some of my coursemates, and with the lecturer!

Then Yin, Hema, Maria and myself decided to celebrate the end of our lectures by having dinner at this newly-discovered Korean-run Japanese place called T&J Fresh Sushi, just opposite Malacca Straits. We all decided to order the sushi and sashimi family set (AUD$50 for 20 pieces of sushi, 14 pieces of sashimi, and 12 small rolls) and we all also had our individual sets of noodles (I had the yaki noodle, which is basically udon and chicken stir fried with some sweet sauce, AUD$10.50). The place was very small, there were only like 3 tables inside and all those poor patrons who came alone would sit at the barstool and have the chefs cook in front of them. Actually, I would like to do that one day. I'd prolly come back again once IH stops their food, but then again I might just hike it all the way to Hikaru. The chefs/owners were really nice though, they're Korean twins and they're very jolly and friendly and funny!

During the course of dinner we brought up the topic of San Churros, which is this chocolateria in Glebe, so we went there for desserts. Maria's husband Cesar came to join us, and I shared a platter of churros with Yin and Hema. It's basically fried bread sticks dusted with fine sugar, which we dipped into little bowls of dark chocolate and caramel.

It was raining real bad the whole day today though, so that meant walking around in wet jeans and squishy shoes. And one of the spokes on my trusty umbrella finally malfunctioned, which is quite heartbreaking, seeing how it's been so sturdy all this while. I'll see if I can mend it with some superglue and thread tomorrow. I'm so smart. Cheers!