.. only to disappear again :P lol. i'm just kidding, gonna try to post more often now :) hee.

so anyways, got my exam schedule today, and it's looking pretty good, except for the first 2 papers :

11/6 - Carbs in Fd Sci
12/6 - Math B
17/6 - Lipids in Fd Sci
25/6 - Microbio

There's no exam for sus eng, but just a final project report to submit :) that's seems to be going pretty alright, so trying to focus on the other subjects for the time being.

I think this project is pretty interesting, so i'm gonna talk about it for a few minutes (lol). If u get bored, scroll past the picture of the boats on the lake, but no garuntee it gets better from there haha.

It's a project based with Engineers without Borders, and basically, every year they pick a country or region that needs help with a lifestyle situation, and they get students to brainstorm and submit solutions to some of the problems faced over there.

this year, they're doing Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia, which u might have seen in travel brochures lol. cos it's this massive lake, the largest freshwater in SEA actually, that people actually live on in boat houses, and they trade, breed lifestock and everything on these boats. 

my group's doing a simple water filtration device that would give the ppl clean water to drink, bathe in, etc. It's not the most original idea, but its an important area cos there's alot of crap (literally and figuratively speaking) in that water that could do some harm.

anyways, back to ewb, i think it's pretty interesting, and a really cool organization that provides real, sustainable solutions that actually help people; but won't go into too much detail here. if u wanna check it out, there's more details on the website :) there are even ways for u to do smth to help these people. it's pretty inspiring.

boatsboatsboats

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On other things, my mom went down to Footscray today, and managed to buy about a million avocados for 1 dollar  lol. turns out, she doesn't eat avocados (and neither does my bro), so this week i'll be giving a couple of avos as an act of random kindness :) hehe. don't know what to do with them? check this out. tells you all the goodness of avos, recipes and even how they can be used as natural beauty products! lol. talk about versatility! hehe.

Whoa, today's been a pretty cold day, and its freezingly cold right now. lol. 

i actually wrote two posts since my last one, but they both got lost by my weird internet before i could post them up. haha.

Anyway, some highlights of the last couple of weeks include:

1. Easter break (picnics, bike rides, chilling at friends' places and the latest Fast and Fu-lious! (*drift, drift, drift..*) lol
   
   
2. Elder KY, Shirley, Jack, Joel V (and Rachel and Leona, for one night); Charlene and Siau Ying down in Melb (trips to the beaches, around the city, the suburbs and jess and daniel's house :)) loved spending time with them all and showing them this awesome city. 
   
   
3. Stomp! (it.. was.. amazing!) Especially loved the newspaper scene, where that one guy was so funny! lol. i'll try to you-tube the scene n stick up if i find it ;)
   
   
4. Jason Mraz! (amazing....!!!! lol.) His opening act, Eric Hutchinson, was really good too!
   
   
5. Catching up on work/assignments/online tests with any free time in between (it was the hols.. fun takes priority! lol)
   
   
6. Josh's Grad and CG in Clayton. It was pretty funny cos when we arrived, we're all so used to Calvin (who had mooting that night) being the camera guy, we all forgot to bring ours! haha. so we relied on Josh's for the night.
   We got him a baby's bib that read: "I'm a little Smarty". :) lol.
   
   

*               *               *               *               *

Uni's been pretty intensive this sem, but pretty interesting in its own ways :) i'm blessed to have pretty good team members for group assignments, and the times that i do have to work on individual ones/studies have been very effective.

i like his quote,

"... i take my time,
there's no need to hurry when i'm making up my mind" 

-Mraz, J.

i'll be at the Ignite Revolution Camp on the 15th-17th May, at Campaspe Downs Campsite :) lol. it should be good :)

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for blue skies.
L-R: Charlene, Calvin, Joel V, Jack, me, Siau Ying

There's currently an epidemic of a '25 random things' tag on fb, n cos i've nothing else to blog about, (and cos i don't have that many random things in my life!) i wrote out a list of 21 :)

1. While trying to think of smth to start with, i tapped on to the Shift button too many times, and activated StickyKeys

2. I have no idea what StickyKeys is :P (i know, i just wasted 5 seconds of your life :P)

3. When in doubt, i google things :P ( 'Sticky Keys' - a feature of computer Desktop Environments. It is an accessibility feature to aid users who have physical disabilities. - Wiki)

4. Sometimes when i have a random thought or poetic moment, i key it into my hp and save it in 'drafts'

5. Sometimes when i find myself waiting in public places without my ipod, i take out my hp and re-read my drafts

6. I'm a really bad runner

7. If there were no time constraints, i could really take and hour to finish a bowl of noodles

8. I've always wanted to learn to play the violin

9. I grew up reading Christopher Pike and R.L Stine books lol

10. I'm currently listening to Georgia - John Mayer

11. I'm currently a little bit obsessed with listening to piano instrumentals!

12. I hope to write a great melody sometime, but never really get around to starting

13. When i was 8, i flew to Myanmar without a visa. Immigration kept me for three hrs before letting me go. lol.

14. Once, a classmate sat in my seat (and on my bag) and set off the anti-theft alarm my dad gave me in the middle of a lecture. No one knew where it was coming from and it went off for like 5mins lol

15. Right now, i'm picking my brain for embarressing moments instead of random things! haha. i should stop :P

16. I have an on/off obsession of cutting my hair short hair, but when i do cut it short, i start planning for what to do with it when it grows long again

17. Tofu's prob one of my most fav foods! yum

18. Whenever i read the acronym 'LMAO' i laugh my head off, cos it looks to me like 'elle mauww' ahhahahahha :)

19. Once stared at my knuckles so long and closely, the criss-crosses started to freak me out :P

20. When i do repetitive jobs like stuffing envelopes or halving flyers, my mind wanders and my hands work faster

21. I hope to do something good some day, that helps people in need or impacts another person in some way. i haven't done anything yet i don't think, or at least not consciously, but i hope the opportunity arises sometime soon.

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On the topic of updates, i think #11 can be talked about. i've expanded my obsession of husky-voiced guitarists to include pianists :P haha. i've been downloading, devoting a whole playlist in my ipod just for piano instrumentals. i really appreciate the fluidity and dynamics of it... haha, don't mean to sound like i really know what i'm talking about, but for a lack of better description; i can't seem to get enough of it. haha.

The other night i emo-ed bout some things.

i leave for singapore tmr, for my bro's wedding! :D will be heading to vietnam for a few days after, so i'll blog again then, or there if i've internet :) i fight the urge to straighten my hair again! i miss the low maintainence of it, and how it always looked like how it should... straight. lol. :P

*edit: oh, i forgot random #22: while i was swimming this morn, two mormons on the 5th floor burst out on their balcony and belted out a patriotic-sounding song. lol. very random.

i was surfing astro today n came across this song that's pretty good stuff :)

                "Here in my home

                     I'll tell you what it's all about

                     There's just one hope here in my heart

                     One love undivided

                     That's what it's all about

                     Please won't you fall in one by one by one with me?"

-'Here in My Home', Malaysian Artistes for Unity

wow, it's 2009 already! hope u guys had an awesome one! 

i spent the first 5 days of it in sibu, for my grandma's birthday bash :) lol. it was cool going back n seeing all the cousins again, killing time with dvd's, random drive-outs n playing cards. before going, i took some time out to start writing my new year's resolutions.. i started doing this since last year, just cos i thought i'd want to have a more focussed idea of what i wanted to see out of the next 12months, n it's a good list to whip out every once in a while. hehe.

Grandpa's house in the sunset

while i was there, i met my uncle's stepdaughter for the first time. man, hanging out with her in that house brought back memories. she's thirteen, n somehow the idea of her just starting out her teen-hood kinda brings me to think bout mine having just ended. not in a bad way, but just to think back to when i was that age, there was so many things that were going to happen, that i wouldn't have known how to handle. some things, if i could, would probably have done differently - done better in the things i was doing, not taken for granted the things i took for granted. but, cos you can't take back the past (n cos it all shapes you in the end), just made me not want to feel this way when i look back on my 20's.

i guess you could say i had a 'rhino' moment:

'all my life has prepared for this moment...... haiyaH!'*
*hee! sorry, loved this slightly manic, obsessive character from Bolt; had to work him into the post somehow :D

so, i'm revising my new years' resolutions, n fitting in some of the things that i would have wanted to be like or done in those last 7 years. and tying them into aspirations i have from now. i know it sounds cliche, but i want my life to make a difference on someone, or something, or somewhere. even if i may not know it.

on a different note, this book is 'be-awesome'! lol

thanks eunice pui for the recommendation :)

it's The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. go read it if u haven't already! lol. it's inspired alot, and also one of my (long-list of) new yr's resolutions, which is to be as bold n tenacious bout my dreams n aspirations :)

well, i hope ur last 6 days has been as meaningful as it has been for me :) here's to wishing you a blessed and fullfilling 2009 ahead!

'dedicating this year to You.'
a new dawn awaits
*cue star wars/(or was it superman)/ Warner Bros soundtrack*

hey, i actually wanted to post this sooner, but my internet's not been so good :P but here's the brief story behind the previous post :)

I was baking the cookies for my mom; she'd accidentally double-booked herself to help cook food for two different events, so i volunteered to help her out.

the day before I'd already invited manda n cheryl over to chill that afternoon, so i decided i should finish one recipe by the morning. i was multi-tasking n doing up the batter while tidying up the tv room upstairs, n on one of my trips back to the kitchen, i couldn't find the granulated sugar. i was thinking 'hrmm where could it be', before finding an unlabelled container in the pantry that was filled with smth that sure looked like sugar, so i measured it out, mixed it up n went on with multi-tasking. lol. (not a smart thing to do) by noon, the house was clean, i was taking the last tray out of the oven n was gonna package them up without tasting them.

.........................  

Whew! That could've ended badly! haha. the cookies were for a kid's christmas party, lol n i cringe at the thought of the near-horried children n angry moms that could've come out of this. From the last post you can guess what I ended up doing, so I'll go on to describe how bad that cookie tasted.... really bad! *pui, pui* Lol. if u haven't already tried this, it's an experience you wouldn't forget. lol.

moral of the story (amongst many others) is : unlabelled containers can't be trusted! hehe

Anyway, manda, Cheryl n I had a fun time laughing bout it (they tried some of the cookies and agreed no amount of icing sugar could pass them off) n we managed to whip up a batch without taking too much of our dvd time, yay J

Here's the recipe for the first batch of cookies I made; minus the salt, they were actually pretty good! :)

Christmas Cinnamon Cookies   

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup pecans or walnuts
• 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar

Preparation:

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Sift flour with baking powder and 1 teaspoon cinnamon; add to butter mixture and blend well. Chill dough for 30 minutes. In a wide shallow bowl, combine chopped nuts with 2 tablespoons cinnamon and 2 tablespoons sugar. Form chilled cinnamon cookie dough into small balls; roll each ball in the cinnamon sugar nut mixture then place on greased and floured cookie sheets (or use silpat sheets) about 2 to 3 inches apart. Bake at 350° for about 10 to 12 minutes. Makes about 36 cinnamon cookies.

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nothing like the smell of homemade cookies to fill your home :)

well, will put up an update on what i've been up to since getting home once i get back from sibu. wish u guys an awesome NYE, n 2009! :D

I baked cookies this morning using salt instead of sugar

.

.

.

it could happen to anyone!
(runs away)

Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States :)

incredibly inspiring..

more updates after my last paper (tmr!) :D can't wait!

lol. man, my browser really doesn't like me! it's the second post i've written tonight! haha k won't re-write them, but here's some updates of recent happenings/stuff coming up

it's 9 days till sem finals! the paper dates are 30th, 31st, 3rd n 7th.. am currently working on getting thru the first two, n it should (hopefully!) be ok from there  

cheryl was over in melb from brisbane a couple of weeks ago, during her sem break, n it was great catching up, with sleepovers n hanging out with her n manda :) if u don't know who she is, she's this brilliant, awesome girl. she (n manda n cyn) is one of the few young, 'old' friends i'm still in touch with n we kinda pick up where we left off whenever we meet again, tho everyone's changed in their own ways over the years :) i guess that's the beauty of old friendships 

anyway, why i'm writing this is, she's completing the lit half of her double degree, n just got approval to do her honors before starting the other half in medicine! n she managed to support herself all thru tht first degree! so proud of u girl! :)

haha other than that, we had our ignite retreat couple of weekends ago too. it was a lil last min in prepping n planning n all, but still was awesome none the less  haha. also got to meet up with ps kenneth, ps sandra n joel while they were here! so good to see them again, n hear pastor preach.. man, am really looking fwd to getting back home n to seeing everyone again.just bout a month more to go!

ok, gonna end here before IE eats up my writing again :P have a good week! will try to write in another post sometime soon ;)

listening to: I'm Yours - Jason Mraz

with the semester crunch time looming closer every day, zhi and i decided to do smth about it, and began our study nights. haha. basically we study like mad and try to motivate each other to keep going

hard at work