Candlelight Dinner + FrankieFreddy

Last Friday was the Candlelight Dinner, which is some formal dinner where representatives from various countries go up in front of everyone and speak a few lines about friendship and love and all those happy stuff. I got to represent Malaysia together with Yu Ning, and it was really very easy cos the all the lines were already prepared and all. We had to say it in our national language, which in this case was Bahasa Malaysia, and we wondered who and how they got it translated, cos it didn't sound quite right. But anyway, the evening started out with pre-drinks in the Wool Room, and we had finger food like vegetarian mini spring rolls, mini pumpkin bites (at least that's what it says on the dinner menu), satay chicken kebabs (more kebab than satay), garlic prawns (these were stuck on skewers and were very good), and of course, the usual wine and champagne.

Then we all went down to the dining hall and everything was decked out real posh and formal and special and all. As usual, there were all sorts of funny cutlery and glasses and bottles of wine and the bread basket and all on the round tables, and candles too, it being called what it's called. There were only three others on my table (Yu Ning, Sarah and Robert), and it was funny cos the four of us were all representatives for our countries that night. The Candlelight Ceremony (that's what it's officially called apparently) started and was soon over.

Then it was dinner time!!!! We always look forward to formal dinners cos the quality of the food improves by leaps and bounds (as compared to normal everyday meals and all). This time the menu read something like this, and I'm typing this out from the menu (which I sneakily brought back, teehee!): maahi kebab (some Iranian salmon dish), roast turkey (dunno why they're serving this when it's not Christmas yet), meigo polow (this was very nice, reminded me of nasi briyani, but it says here on the menu that it's some Iranian dish of shrimp and rice), roast garlic potatoes, roast baby beets (which I didn't take, don't like beets), seasoned asparagus (which I had to take from Yu Ning cos they didn't have any by the time I reached the table, not sure if they refilled this), and caesar salad (very nice). Dessert was mango mousse with berry sauce, and I had orange juice and shiraz cabernet.

The bottle of chardonnay was unopened, so I took that back to my room, muahahahahaha! Sarah and Yu Ning came back to my room with me, and we took some snaps of ourselves:

Then that night was the Halloween Party, which was coincidentally also the last IH party for the semester. There was some competition for the best carved pumpkin, and Sarah, Yu Ning and myself decided we'd have a laugh and bring carved oranges instead. Why? Simple: we didn't wanna spend moolah on pumpkins (what would we do with all that pulp???) and oranges were free from the fruit bar. I had a lot of fun carving my orange. It took me quite a few tries (and a few oranges) to finally be happy with my orange (after 2 oranges, I went to Martha Stewart's website to try to refer to some of her pumpkin templates for my 3rd orange, but my carving skills are pretty bad and my orange turned out looking quite different from the template). Removing the orange pulp was prolly the messiest part of the whole experiment: I had a lot of orange juice those couple of days I was working on my oranges.

I attached a bit of string through the top of the orange and stuck a birthday candle inside the orange, and we were all joking about how we'd pretend it was the Lantern Festival (and how the 3 crazy Asian girls got the wrong idea again). We brought our oranges to the party, and I even had a box of matches and lit up my little orange everytime someone enquired about the little monstrosity dangling from my fingers. I even named my orange FrankieFreddy cos with all the thread sticking out of my orange (I had to stitch it together cos UHU glue did not work, trust me I must have wasted almost the entire tube of glue) and it reminding me of something out of a horror movie and all, I thought it was a comically appropriate (and affectionate) name for my little pet. And oh, I won the Best Carved Pumpkin competition! Of all the biggest ironies. It must have been because we were the only ones who came with 'pumpkins'. They stopped the music and announced it through the speakers and all, and the friends I was with, I think they were more excited than I was. I was found the whole thing really hilarious!!!! They gave me a bottle of Passion Pop, some carbonated wine thingy, which I will enjoy slowly, after I'm finished with the remainder of my essays. And I know you're curious about the award-winning little monster and all, so here are some snaps of him:

And that's it people! Will blog more soon! It's STUVAC now, but I still have a class tomorrow cos there was a holiday we had to replace and all. Will be hanging out with my coursemates tomorrow after class, so there's always lots to blog about! Cheers!

IH Ball!

Well, I've never been to a ball before, and everyone says it's supposed to be like this grand once-in-a-lifetime kinda event, so when the IH Ball came around on the 8th of October, I decided to give it a go and, well, go. It was supposed to be a whole bunch of us going, but in the end only half of the 'gang' went. Still, I had Aho-chan and Baka-chan along with me (Yu Ning and Sarah's new nicknames, their previous nicknames being SexyLala and Playmate previously), and we ended up sitting at the same table with the rest of our friends (KawaiiNeilNeil and Andy BoBo and MariAnZhang and JakeJake to name a few), so that was great fun. Don't ask me where all the nicknames come from, it's all just accumulated along the way. We took a bus all the way to the QVB bus let-off spot, and then took a walk to the Sydney Centrepoint Tower and took a couple of lifts all the way up to the top where the restaurant was (the Sky Lounge? at least that's what it says on the ticket). The view was pretty spectacular from here, and you pretty much can look down on the whole of Sydney.

It was formal dress and all, so we were all very spiffy and posh and all the tables were pretty and white and you've got all this cutlery and glasses and even a table where all the booze is laid out (with its own 'bartender'!).

We took a whole bunch of pictures before dinner started, and here's some of them:

Then dinner officially started! It was free-flowing wine (although the man with the white wine never came back), and at one point in time I had, like, champagne and white wine and red wine, all in pretty glasses in front of me. The menu consisted of 3 courses, and there were 2 choices for each course, which was alternated according to our seating (i.e. you would get a different appetiser from the person next to you). We all decided to share around at my table though, so we all pretty much managed to taste every dish.

Then while the cool party people hit the dancefloor, us nice kids sat around and goofed off with each other, as evidenced by the following pictures:

After the ball we all decided to walk over to The Ivy, which is like this superclub or something, there's different levels and this giant dancefloor and a waterfall and various rooms with plush seating and all. There were so many people there that night, it was basically a couple of hours of pushing and pulling and clutching each other's arms/bags/clothes just to make sure we didn't get lost in the crowd (we didn't drink, we're all such good kids). We toured the place quite comprehensively, but my favourite part was when we all crashed at a table and just waited for someone brave enough to suggest going home.

Overall it was a great experience of a night, made even more fun (and funny!) because I had good company. I'm glad I went, and it's definitely something to remember for a very long time. Cheers, y'all!