Until now.

Righto! Not a whole lot has happened so far (I mean, it is still January), but a whole lot actually has. Now, that might not make a tonne of sense to you, so let me rephrase: in terms of events and seeing people, I haven't been super busy. But in terms of how much these few meetups and activities mean to me, well, I'd say they're priceless. Last weekend, a few Tassie mates and I signed up as volunteers for a pre-departure camp organised by MASCA. This camp, also known as Down Under Camp 2014, was the first of its kind as it catered not only to sponsored students, but also privately funded students. It was held at UKM Bangi, which is about a 45 minute drive from where I live in Seremban. The night before leaving home for the camp, I doubted my choice in volunteering for the camp, mostly because I wouldn't know anyone except a handful of people. I actually said "Mummmmmmmm why did I even sign up for this I WILL BE SURROUNDED BY STRANGERS AND THAT MAKES ME NERVOUS AND I HAVEN'T EVEN LEFT HOME YET. IS IT TOO LATE TO CANCEL ON THEM!??!?!?!!" And of course, my mum replied with, "Who asked you to be so kepoh and sign up?" Kepoh means nosy in Hokkien. -__- Thanks for the support, mum! Anyway, I packed up my things for camp and arrived at UKM on Friday evening, along with other volunteers who had traveled interstate. Checking into my room, which I shared with a lovely girl called Syafiqah, was a bit of a shock because my standards for on-campus accommodation were warped (if you will) as a result of staying at one of UTAS's residential colleges. That being said, it was cosy and quite cooling - and my roommate was great!

Dinner with the Tassie boys on Friday at the UKM cafeteria! I couldn't stop giggling when they arrived because it felt like I hadn't seen them in ages. Amir even told me that I'd been cooped up in my house for too long with insufficient social interaction... Thanks ah. -_-

Honestly, getting to know the other volunteers wasn't as tough as I thought it would be. I'm not saying it wasn't terrifying at first, especially when most of the other volunteers' response to my "Hi, I'm Rae from Tassie!" was "Oh, so you're Rae!" I mean, seriously. My brain went into overdrive and I was dying to ask them what they knew about me and where they got their information from. Ack. On the plus side, I got to see a few familiar faces from MASA2013. 

On Saturday, the camp was officiated by Dato' Seri Idris Jusoh. It was a slightly fancy event and most, if not all of the volunteers were pretty tuckered out by the end of the day. The camp participants had the opportunity to ask questions about life in Australia, and Mathu and Ridhuan (part of the organising committee) briefed the participants on important steps to take before leaving Malaysia and upon arriving in Australia. Personally, I wish I'd known all that info before I first left home for Tassie back in 2010. I was so lost when I arrived in Australia! :\

So. One more day of camp to go! The last and final event for DUC was the DUC open day, during which the DUC volunteers and participants organised a carnival of sorts for kids from charity organisations. Among the booths that we set up were a photo booth (which my friend, Jason, and I handled), a tie-dye booth, a bouncing castle (we all laughed when it deflated), a sand art booth, and a refreshments booth. Oh, and there was free ice cream, too! The kiddies were all SO small! Jason and I were a bit overwhelmed by the little ones tugging at our elbows demanding for photos. All we heard for those few hours was, "Akak/abang... Nak amik gambar!!" Most importantly, though, the kiddies were happy. They were slightly unruly as all kids at that age are, but I got the warm and fuzzies from seeing them laugh and run around. :)

Besh fwennnnn konon! :) Akif Rezal, who's like a cheerful little brother to me.

New friends!! Yuh-Lin and Alice.

Now, this girl, Rehanna, is something special. Visit her blog to find out more :)

Grabbed this shot from Anas! Unfortunately, most of the participants had left by the time this photo was taken. Camp ended on a bittersweet note - I experienced withdrawal symptoms shortly after coming home, and it felt a little weird not being surrounded by a group of people. I'm so glad I went, though. I made a bunch of new friends and I did not isolate myself from the masses!

Shortly after DUC, I met up with two of my favourite guys in the world. Seriously. I love them to bits. I hadn't seen Darsh since the last time he was in Hobart, which was after a frisbee match or something. And I hadn't seen Haziem since he came down to Hobart for the Hari Raya meet and greet with EMA! Man. We had chili pan mee for lunch and ended up with our butts on fire (sorry, TMI), and the few hours we spent together were laughter-filled. I don't mean just "hee hee" coquettish giggling but actual "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA" unglam laughing, with seal-like clapping. But isn't the latter the best sort of laughter? :D 

These guys. <3

Aaaaaaaaand today, I met up with someone I've known for more than half of my life: May Qin! We started hanging out when we were 9 or 10, I think, and we've been friends ever since - even throughout high school and uni! However, the two of us did not make up the complete trio as our dear Vivien was down with the flu. :( Nevertheless, we had fun fangirling over BigBang and Sherlock and pushing our way through the crowd at the IT fair at Mid Valley. Hahah!

This was a sushi shot for Vien because the three of us always eat Japanese food when we meet up, but because MQ and I had Korean food, we took this photo to make up for it. Hee! This would have been a nice photo if it weren't for my badly-timed blink. =_=

Much better. :)

So I've written about 3 events in this one post. Not heaps, like I said. But hopefully you can see why I'm so happy. :)

Anyhoo, I'm going for a medical checkup tomorrow for my new student visa, so yay, chest x-rays and urine tests! Not. :P I'm heading back to Tassie in exactly 3 weeks. It's slightly daunting, really. Final year of undergrad and all that. Plus 'work' commitments with MASCA Tas, but the whole team just feels like one big family and I'm sure we'll accomplish many things this year!

8 years

I met up with a couple of old friends yesterday. I've known these girls since we were 13, and hahah, holy crap, we've been friends for 8 years - I find that so hard to believe, to be honest! Our friendship hasn't had the smoothest of rides, with arguments, passive-aggressive behaviour, and drifting apart getting the best of us at times. I'm just glad I was able to see them after so long, and I take comfort in the fact that although a lot has changed, the essentials haven't. Hahah, okay, I'll stop being cheesy now. Aside from seeing the girls, I was reunited with roti banjir... no big deal (actually, no, it's a huge deal).

Fun fact: we all go to the same orthodontist in SS15. Shoutout to Dr Jagjit for fixing our crooked teeth!

Jess and I headed to her house (sort of) in Sunway to check on her dog for a while, and man, that pooch was cute. Her name is Momo and she was extremely friendly and adorable. :) After some time, we made our way to Bangsar because we wanted to check out lunch at Antipodean. Getting to Bangsar from Subang was surprisingly quick and easy, but finding a parking spot was a huge pain in the butt. We ended up parking at Bangsar Village II and walked from the car park to Antipodean, which was bustling and lively as the lunch crowd had taken over.

Choosing something from the huge menu was difficult, but I settled on the big breakfast, which consisted of scrambled eggs, chicken sausage, mushrooms, toast, and a hash brown. The serving was surprisingly big and satisfying!

Jess had the salmon marlborough something something HAHAH I can't remember what it was called but it tasted pretty good!

We got stuck in traffic on the way back to Subang, so of course, we had to take selfies. I'm only posting the most flattering one because we look hideous in the rest, hahah!

I'm glad we got to see each other, the 3 of us. It's been a long time and I've realised that I can't not be close to them, despite all the crap that has happened. I had a really good time and look forward to seeing them again before I leave for Tassie sometime in February. :')

Oddly enough, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today and moped around the house with a cloud over my head. Sometimes you just get days where you feel... Off. Today was one of them, and it bothered me slightly more than usual because I've never had so many off days in a year as I have this year. I've lost count of the number of days where I just feel like lying on my bed and staring at the walls for the whole day, with little to no regard for anyone or anything else. Uni kept me on my feet for the most part, but now that I'm on holiday, I can actually just drape myself on the couch/bed and immerse myself in that dark, weird feeling that I can't shake off as easily as I used to. I took the K10 quiz (the Kessler psychological distress scale) on the Beyond Blue website earlier tonight, and my score was 34, which indicated a high level of distress. I snorted at the result, mostly because I'm in denial. The results page suggested that I see a GP but at this point in time, I don't want to do anything while I'm home because my parents would just fret. How do you even bring the topic up? "Hey mum and dad, I've been feeling worthless and mildly depressed for the past year or so, how about that?" Yeah, no. I've started writing in a journal again, which I've been told helps somewhat, and I'll see how things go. If nothing improves, well, I guess I'll go back to seeing the uni counsellors. 

ANYWAY, enough with my problems. My parents and I are heading to KL tomorrow for beef ball noodles, which I haven't had in about 3 years now. Wow. More noms to come!

Scraping by

Week 10. Oh dear. A few more weeks until swotvac pops up and bam, exams. There really isn't enough time in a day. At this point in time, I feel attached to another object by an inclined plane, wrapped helically around an axis if I took the usual 4. Uni has reached that time of the semester where the library is packed at 9pm, unlike how it usually is at the start of the semester. People have started cramming and assignments are due either during the last week or during swotvac. Thanks a lot, lecturers! :\

In other news, the hermit crabs in my group are slowly dropping off, one by one, and nobody knows why. Our lecturer, Geoff, and supervisor, Ben, have told us that the crabs are very sensitive to environmental changes, so we shouldn't be too devastated if half of the original batch ends up dying during the experimental period. While that's all fine and dandy, it still saddens me whenever we come across a fallen soldier. Just the other day, I was holding a crab over the ethanol burner because that's how we've been getting them to crawl out of their shells, and after some time, it just stopped moving altogether and wasn't responsive to any pokes or gentle pulls on its legs. I was pretty devastated when that happened, because although I'd been present when the other crabs died, I wasn't the one directly responsible for their deaths. A couple of my groupmates carried out the last leg of our experiment today and apparently 7 crabbies were found dead in one of the main tubs. GAH. RIP, little ones. I wish we knew how to take better care of you (but we followed all the instructions from various websites!!!!!!!!!!!!!)... and thank you for giving us unexpected results from the experiment.

Anyway, after reading a friend's blog post and seeing my name following a few sentences on gratitude a while ago, I'm feeling quite happy. It's nice to know that I'm not as crappy a friend/person as I think I am. At least I'm doing something right. And it's nice to be acknowledged for it. Most days, I feel like I'm a terrible person, not of much use to my friends who need someone to talk to. I have drifted apart from a few friends due to my newish lack of interest in gossiping (it has taken a lot of effort but why waste time and energy talking about other people's lives?), and I see myself as a bad listener. I always expect my friends to be willing to listen to my rants but I feel like I never return the favour. I'm not sure if many other people feel the same way. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself.

I should've blogged about JOM! Festival but it was a while back and I feel like it's too late to blog about it. Other events that have happened recently include today's SOLS vs staff Ultimate match, which was fun to watch. The students won, obviously (hah)... And there was this film screening outside Lazenby's, which was quite interesting, I guess. The real reason I went was for the food, though, hahaha. That being said, I ate chicken for the first time in about a week and now I feel really ill. Hmm. At least I got pancakes, though. Pancakes make everything better. Anyway, I should probably get back to my assignments.

MSS + TUU Night Market

Righto! Taking a break from catching up with lectures to finish off this post. The night market/pasar malam was held last Friday evening at the TUU carpark. Although the night market was originally supposed to be held on an earlier date, there was a change of plans due to a clash regarding tent hire (or something like that). I had class from 9am to 5pm, so I made my way to the carpark right after I was done. Stall owners were slowly pouring in, bringing their and other cooking equipment with them. Soon, students and uni staff started coming by in groups, walking from stall to stall, examining what each had to offer. Call me biased, but I think that there was a fairly wide variety of noms available!

Once the sun set, the night market looked like this. Minus the cold weather, it felt like I was back home.

And here's a photo of the MSS committee. :) It's not very organised, but it'll do!

I think this is the first photo of Mich and I in 2013. We stayed up late the night before, as we were cooking chicken curry and rice for our stall. Thankfully, we had a few buddies who helped us out in the kitchen.

Now, for MSS's stall, we sold all 30 tupperwares of chicken curry and rice in just over an hour, which was unexpected! BUT. We tried to make teh tarik, which proved to be an epic fail because somehow, we ended up burning the tea. It even smelled chao da (burnt)! However, we had cup corn, which we managed to sell despite it tasting somewhat funky (at least that's what I thought). It was a comical experience, to say the least.

Apart from tending to the MSS stall, I walked around a fair bit, checking out each stall and buying wayyyy too much food. One of my friends who was selling nasi lemak sold all her food - all 150 tupperwares! I'm glad I bought one serving before the crowd swarmed around her stall, and although I bought it for the next day's breakfast/lunch, I caved and ate my nasi lemak for supper. Um... Oops?

Other stalls sold things like chicken satay (which was quite tasty), tempura mushrooms, chicken rendang, Hainanese chicken rice, vegetarian and prawn spring rolls, nasi butter and ayam masak merah, roti jala, kaya balls, and chili crab. I wasn't able to sample everything, though. But I was able to see a few faces I haven't seen in a while, including Jan, Michael K, and Campbell! :D

Fizi, Faiz, Hayyani, Alyn, Farahin, Akif, Lidya, Farah, girl in purple whose name I don't know, and Shafiq :) 

Fahmi aka one of the best players for the Tassie rugby team during MASA 2013. He even played frisbee with us even though he was injured - what a trooper!

Atiqah and I, looking mighty fine. (thanks, Mich P for the photo)

The night market wound down at 8pm. Some stall owners were selling their remaining food for half the original price, and eventually, only empty tables and overflowing rubbish bins were left behind. The MSS crew and I were a little worn out, but mostly, we were just relieved. Thanks to the rest of the MSS committee and TUU for pulling this event off!

Hi... Again.

So... here I am, once again in the blogosphere. This is the third 'serious' blog I've owned, and the reason I decided to start a new blog was because I felt I needed to start documenting important events in my life again, this time with fewer emotional posts, hopefully. The first serious blog I had lasted me 4 years, from 2005 to 2009. The second serious blog I owned survived for just about 3 years, and although I tried to cut down on TMI posts, there are far too many on that blog that I'm too embarrassed to admit to yet reluctant to delete. This is my solution. Whether or not this blog survives for even a year is something I'm unsure of but I'll employ the Malaysian method of "see how lah."

For starters, I thought I'd write about MASA 2013 which was recently held in Sydney. Previously known as NCG, the Malaysian Summit of Australia brought together Malaysian students studying in Australia over several components: games, conference, careers, student leaders agenda, and excellence awards. Flying to Sydney was pretty exciting as the only time I'd ever been in the area was when I spent a few hours in transit, waiting for my flight to Singapore. Actually being in Sydney, as it turned out, was an entirely different experience altogether. Once I'd touched down and picked up my bag from the carousel, I searched for the airport train to take me to Central station in the heart of the CBD. However, I ended up going down the wrong escalator (which apparently led to a different exit - one that didn't involve the airport train), which is hardly surprising considering my horrible sense of direction. I darted up the escalator and made it to the ticket counter where I then purchased an insanely pricey ($18 or so) ticket to Central station and Epping station, the latter being where Dilini was going to pick me up.

Sitting in the train, I felt a wave of jakunness wash over me. I felt a little like a country bumpkin, where life in the big city was slightly daunting and everything was new and unavailable in Tassie. I thought to myself, "Oh my God, I'm in a train, I haven't been in a train since I was in Europe, this is so awesome AHHHHHHH!!" Once I'd reached Epping station, I waited for a couple of minutes before Dilini showed up, every bit as bubbly and beautiful as I'd remembered her from the last time we saw each other (2011! whoaaaaaa). She drove us back to her huge (like "Hey MTV, welcome to ma crib" huge) house in Pennant Hills. Her mum and her sister were warm and welcoming, and I reveled in the amount of space the house had. No seriously, when all you have is a small room in college, being in a house is like taking a deep breath of fresh air. We headed out in the evening and had dinner at Blackbird Cafe at Cockle Bay Wharf. We walked around for a little bit, ducked into Scary Canary but found nothing to drink/do there, so we darted off to Grandma's Bar, which was as hipster as it sounds. It was a dimly lit, tiny area in the basement of a bunch of shop lots. Drinks were fairly pricey (I now appreciate cheap-ish drinks at O Bar) and the one thing that had me stymied was the minimum EFTPOS charge - $20. Seriously. That didn't even cover 2 beers! It was (I only use this word when I reeeeeally mean it) redonkulous. We spent a few hours there with Dragan and Theeran, then Jon came by. Jon, Dilini and I took one of the super late trains back to Epping, and when we got back to her place, we were famished. Cue mi goreng and the glory that is roti prata. We stayed up until 3am or so, just eating and talking and giggling, which resulted in us getting up slightly later than originally planned, so we cancelled plans to eat at Red Spoon and instead decided to make waffles for brunch. Dilini's mum very kindly cooked at least half a dozen roti prata, which we happily devoured while making the waffle batter.

The waffles were to die for, and I didn't think whipped cream would go well with them but mannnnnn, I was wrong. The passionfruit pulp was delicious as well!

Dilini dropped Jon and I off at the train station just after 12pm, where we took the train back to Town Hall (for Jon) and Central (for me). I checked into the Railway Square YHA and was pleasantly surprised by the room and facilities. I was sharing the room with two other girls, Rach and Yuka.

Clean room = happy Rae.

I rested for a while before Jon and I met up again and took the train to the University of Sydney, where the opening ceremony for MASA was being held in the University of Sydney Union International Student Lounge. As usual, Malaysian timing kicked in and the event started over an hour later than the expected time.

There was a minor food crisis as there wasn't enough rice, so the volunteers and committee members had to whip up more as the event progressed. The table of Tasmanians also got shushed for being too loud, which was slightly silly because we were just being supportive and enthusiastic. Oh well. Anyway, after the opening ceremony ended, a bunch of us decided to go back to the city and have some fun. Our first stop was Scubar, which is a backpackers bar. In all honesty, it was a really fun bar. The crowd there was half as sleazy as the crowd you'd normally get in O Bar, and drinks were cheap (for once!).

Tassie peeps!

We got our drink on.

We made our way to another bar called El Loco but it wasn't nearly as lively as Scubar, so we went back and had a few more drinks and went nuts on the dance floor. Caleb abused the term "YOLO" that night as he screamed it to the world, brazenly running across roads even though the green light for pedestrians was still red. Although it was hilarious at the time, in hindsight, I'm glad nothing happened. All of us made it home to our respective hostels, thankfully. Some of us stayed at the YHA, while others stayed at 790 On George and The George Hotel.

The next day (or rather, later on that day), I got up and took a walk in the CBD on my own. As much as I love and appreciate company, I like to explore new places by myself from time to time.

Queen Victoria Building. The architecture was stunning!

I walked up and down George St, and at the last minute, Fay (my cousin from Auckland) told me that she was on George St as well with her friends. They were in Sydney for a Hillsong conference (I think). We quickly agreed to meet up at the World Square shopping centre, and man, I'm glad we were able to meet up! We (Fay, her friends, and I) had lunch at Din Tai Fung. The food was mediocre but the company was lovely.

Sister from another mister (literally).

We walked around after lunch for a while, but I had to leave and get ready for the careers fair and conference later that night. Although the careers fair had little to offer in terms of relevance to what I'm studying, the conference was eye-opening and entertaining. There were speakers from Talentcorp, Shell, Parti Gerakan Rakyat, and Parti Keadilan Rakyat.

The following day marked the commencement of MASA games. Although  there were sports such as futsal, touch rugby, and tennis, the only game I took part in was ultimate frisbee, which was held at Moore Park.

It was a cloudless day and the sun was pretty unforgiving. Nevertheless, it was heaps of fun.

Tassie ultimate team! We didn't win any medals but the experience and friendships strengthened by the matches we played was priceless. We also had 100Plus, which seemed fitting - I mean, come on, it's the go-to sports beverage most, if not all Malaysians drink after playing sports.

Later that night, I met up with my big bro, Kelvin, and my sis-in-law, Vic, both of whom I haven't seen in over 4 years. We had dinner at a Bavarian joint on The Rocks, Lowenbrau. The food was nomgasmic (best chicken schnitzel and apple strudel I've ever had)! I wish I could ditch uni and attend their wedding in September. :(

With big brudda and SIL :)

Day 5 in Sydney kicked off with me finally exploring the bookshop near the YHA. Few things make me happier than the sight of cheap books. I bought Lolita by Vladimir Nobokov, a novel I've been meaning to read but never got around to buying a copy of. Caleb and I then met up and walked around the CBD and we eventually ended up having lunch in a food court in Chinatown (this is something Tassie needs).

Prawn udon for $10. Tasty and light!

Brown rice tea with pearls from Chatime. AHHHHHHH! I was so freaking happy after buying this. I have missed bubble tea. Not that there isn't good bubble tea in Hobart, I mean, MoMo is pretty good, but they don't have the flavours that Chatime and Gong Cha have.

Caleb and I took the bus to Moore Park where the boys were about to play rugby. I'd been looking forward to this all week as I knew the boys had been training really hard, despite having only a few subs.

Rugby boys, all smiley and happy before their first game against South Australia.

The boys ended up bagging the silver medal for the overall rugby event! So proud of them and they played really well. In the evening, a bunch of us went for the MASA closing ceremony which was held at Malaysia Hall. We got there 2 hours late (Malaysian timing, bleargh) but the ceremony was still ongoing and there was still plenty of food!

Haziem, Yuka, myself, Darshan, Najjib (who's moving to Canberra), Bryan, Adrian, Rach, Jo-Hann, Faiz, and Jon. We screamed 'Najjib!' so many times that night, I'm pretty sure Najjib himself was slightly embarrassed by our antics... Oops.

The gang wanted to head out to a bar or two after the closing ceremony, so we took the bus back to the city and made our way to Chinatown where we had supper first. 

Behold, my bowl, no, sink of prawn congee. It was amazing. Just... Wow.

Adrian and I had flights to catch the following morning, so we split off from the rest of the group at 1-something in the morning. Thankfully, we both managed to wake up on time, check out, and meet up at Central station, where we took the train to the airport.

Adrian! As it turns out, he and Darshan went to high school with one of my cousins, Suan Yean. Small world much?

As I had over an hour to spare before boarding my flight, I walked around the airport and spent way too much time testing perfumes in the Victoria's Secret store. Once I boarded the plane, however, everyone in that flight spent an hour just stuck in our seats, waiting to take off. I heard people grumbling and cursing Jetstar from my seat, and it was entertaining for the most part, but then I started getting peeved as well because the air crew wasn't giving us regular updates on the flight status. Eventually, we left rainy Sydney and touched down in beautiful, sunny Hobart. It was strange, not being surrounded by skyscrapers anymore. Instead, there was Mount Wellington, covered in snow. I also found it a bit of a pity that I'd had to leave Sydney just as I was starting to get used to the hustle and bustle of the big city. But Sydney will always be there, and I'm keen on going back for a short stay at some point.

Now that I'm back in Hobart and uni's starting tomorrow (but I don't have class on Mondays so I technically start on Tuesday), I'm not feeling as pumped as I should. I should be excited about learning again, I should be excited about seeing my friends, but that feeling just isn't there yet. I can only give it time, I suppose.

I'll try to post something every week. But that's subject to assignments and whatnot, so, um... See how lah? :)