Fatin Shaza

My entire personality in a nutshell

I can finally cross out one of my many 'milestones' in my personal achievements checklist. And that is designing a house for my parents. I was apprehensive about returning to Malaysia because then I can no longer avoid facing what my design has materialized into (after all those cost/budget-cuts by the contractor); but now I can safely say it's not....... bad. This is definitely going into my work portfolio *ish happy*

Continuation southwest Victoria with cousins

Melbourne

Twelve Apostles Marine Park, Great Ocean Road

Torquay surf beach, Great Ocean Road

Werribee Zoo

Werribee Rose Garden

Ballarat Wildlife Centre. KANGAROOS!!!!

South Wharf bridge, Melbourne

(pictures thanks to cousins!!)

Two bands in a day

Went up to Melbourne CBD today for Incubus' concert at Festival Hall, and I bumped in to Khairil and a school classmate near Southern Cross train station. How awkward... I don't have many SMKSH friends (save a few handful), so seeing ex-classmates is something that I don't know how to handle.

We had to find a way to kill time before the concert, so we went down to Vic Market's night market and hung around watching the live performances.

When it was around 6pm, me, Julie and Feera headed back to Festival Hall for the highlight of the day (week? month?) - INCUBUS.

They were amazing!!!!!! I can't stress how much I enjoyed the show. They played 23 songs, including the encores. Around the end where they finished 'Megalomaniac' on a high note and left the stage, the audience started stamping their foots on the floor and calling them to come back for an encore. They did come back, and played 'I Miss You', of all songs. What a way to pull at our heartstrings! The show ended for real with 'A Certain Shade of Green', and then we had to reluctantly go back out to the cold 14 degrees Melbourne night : (

They played a lot of songs I loved like 'Consequences', 'Privilege', 'I Miss You' (of course), 'Talk Show On Mute' and 'Circles'. But my ultimate favs 'Pendulous Threads' and 'Just a Phase' never emerged... But that doesn't matter because it was still worthwhile. Topless Brandon omg 8D

(google is my friend)

Peanuts

Cherry sorting farm + vacation with cousins

This is an update on my personal life from a few weeks back. In summary, I quit my berry-picking job, packed my bags and hauled them up to Burwood for another job at a cherry-sorting factory with Mira and Julie. Met a whole bunch of cool people from work, then after two weeks we said sad goodbyes to the cherry factory people.

My cousins came over a week ago, but before that, I was hanging out almost everyday with my housemates and the Yuille people. Too much activity those last five weeks, so I didn't have much time to update my blog. ~~Not that being alone and bored right now is gonna make me wanna make a proper detailed blog post anyway.~~

Sorry for the low quality photos, iphone 3Gs mah. Also,the photos are not in chronological order because I'm too lazy to organize it. So.

A look-out point on the Great Ocean Road trip with my cousins (we took turns driving -- and I got the worst route. The extremely boring, sloping, winding roads from Twelve Apostles to Apollo Bay, in which I spent 3 hours driving without seeing anything except forest trees).

I don't remember the signboard being vandalized to this extent when I was here last year and two years ago... must be new. I kinda like it though.

Even though my cousins and I looked happy here, don't be fooled -- it was 35 degrees celsius and we were sweaty, grumpy, tired and hungry. Disappointed with the Werribee Zoo; was hoping to see kangaroos but they were all hiding from the hot weather (and us) :(

Last day working at the cherry factory. Ah, good memories, good times. Made a few friends here.

The cherry factory. I mostly worked on the upper mezzanine level, packing and making boxes for the sorters below.

Hanging out at Panache with cousins again. And the best part was that it was 10pm and the place was packed with people from the aftermath of the Geelong Sails Festival at the waterfront. Geelong felt like Melbourne for a moment there.

Back in December (before even quitting the berry picking farm job), Mira, her sister and I went to the Rose Garden in Werribee. I had taken a bunch of beautiful rose photos here, but accidentally restored my iphone to a previous backup and all those photos got deleted T_T

My cousins and I weren't satisfied with Werribee Zoo's lack of kangaroos and koalas, so we tried again at Ballarat Wildlife Centre. This time we struck gold. There were tons of kangaroos just hanging around like domestic cats would in a house, that by the end of the day I kinda got sick of them. Hahaha. Okay maybe not. No one gets sick of kangaroos evah.

Here's a picture of two male kangaroos having a playful fight. That's what the rangers told me, though. To me, they looked like they were being preeeetty violent.

A random shot of a beautiful beam of light peeking through my apartment's blinds. This is actually my concept for last two semester's Architecture Resolution class where I designed a surau. I wanted to have a beam of light through the mihrab space which will fall onto the floor of the prayer hall, to indicate 'direction'. Even though Des Smith liked this concept, I was mostly bullshitting (as always) and wasn't sure it'll work in real life. With this picture, I'm now rest assured that my concept does work.

Hanging out at Glen Waverly shopping district (aka Kelana-Jaya-sesat-in-Australia) with Geelong kids and Mei + Michelle after the last day of work at cherry factory. Intriguing flavours, ain't it? In case you're wondering, the black(?) is black sesame and green is green tea. Yum.

Punch-in/scan-in cards for cherry factory work. Amira, Julie and Shaza :)

(Yup, lots of Malaysians working here)

Helmi, Rais and Aki praying underneath an (oak?) tree on the last day of work, because there's no proper praying space in the factory. I like this shot a lot.

Hanging out at the balcony of my apartment after a sweltering, hot day that forced us to dine outside the house because it was cooler than inside. It was surprisingly fun, where we watched the sunset while having dinner, then baking brownies for supper while playing Monopoly deal. The stoner neighbours next door decided to 'join' us outside by hanging out at the balcony as well, albeit doing... questionable things like smoking weed and sleeping topless on the floor.

The neighbours moved out a week ago, and I feel sad for no apparent reason. Maybe because they moved in exactly a year ago (when I was living alone for 3 months in Jan-Feb-March), so knowing that they moved out is a reminder that a whole year has gone by and that I, too, have to leave soon :(