Chinese New Year's Eve Celebration

Ack...can't believe that tonight's the last night I'm gonna be typing posts from Malaysia...until the end of this year, anyway...I'm not even on the plane yet, and I'm already wondering what I'll be missing! :((

Hehe...today has been great! I finally got to devour all the once-a-year-and-long-awaited chinese dishes cooked by my aunt...mmm...but at the same time I felt so awfully guilty that we arrived late at my cousins' place...they were all waiting for us to have lunch (Ack!)..Eh..what to do...in the end I volunteered to do the dishes to help clear my conscience a little :D Oh, boy...dinner was greaer :) Following tradition, this time my relatives came over to my place and had dinner, MARATHON-STYLE...hahaha...there were like, 2 different tables (or 'stalls'); one for steamboat stuff, and the other was the 'junkfood stand' (pizza, pasta, garlic toast...) Everyone was constantly 'immigrating' from one table to the next (Except for me, a well-known-die-hard-and-lifelong fan of pizza :))

Everyone has been so nice and sweet :D Thanks, everyone, for all your support and best wishes and blessings! Thanks Yeong Ru, Chai Kun, Suet Yee, Yuk Jing, Li Shawn, and Swee Keng for having that farewell thingie for me! :) I didn't get a chance to properly thank u guys for it, so now -finally- I wanna let u guys know how much I appreciated it :)) Thanks Eileen, Swee Leng, Su Ann, and Soon Yee, too, for arranging the Saturday (was it saturday?) meeting (hehe..Eileen, help me thank your mom for the food n Shandy, will u? And Soon Yee...Although by the time u turned up on Saturday I had already left, thanks for arranging it hahahah)...And to my fellow Sunway College Ausmatian buddies, especially...Serene, 'Ah Jun', 'Ah Jin', Xin Yin, Carissa, Sue Lin, and whomever that I haven't mentioned (I'm a little absent-minded)...thanks for everything! :)
And -hehehe- Michelle, sorry that I didn't stay long for your farewell dinner (*eeps...guilty...*); anyway, you're dropping by tomorrow, aren't you? :) Enjoy your trip to Australia, too...hope your accommodation thingie is already settled...(Ps: Update your blog, woman! :))

Ps: Yeong Ru, thanks for the cookies. Heh they taste good! :))

Thank you everyone and have a very happy chinese new year!!! :)))

A bundle of nerves

Kinda weird...I wasn't exactly feeling nervous one iota before this, but now that it's about 4 more days before taking off to Australia, I'm suddenly a bundle of nerves...Was kinda thinking about what my dad said, something about it being like a 'transition of a potted plant from fertilised soil to the raw earth'...hehe it has a nice sound to it, huh? 'Fertilised soil' and 'raw earth'...undoubtedly one of dad's subtle methods of insinuating that I've led an extremely sheltered life, leading to the fact that I have like 0 survival skills + road-blindness, etc etc...

Right now I'm practically packing my entire house into 2 huge suitcases...I brought almost everything, 'cept for the kitchen sink, though ;) Seriously, EVERYTHING, from comics, paint, paint brushes, to cutlery and mugs and -even I don't believe this- my all-time loyal dictionary. Okay, okay, I know; by the rate this is going, I may as well immigrate there...

Geez...I'm not even there and I'm starting to miss my home already (When I say 'home', I mean everything about it...family, friends, my -hehe- comic collection, the FOOD...)...I'm really looking forward to eating lunch at my cousins' place on the afternoon of the 9th! Heh...probably due to the fact that I'm quite certain my aunt will prepare 2 of my fav. dishes- fried prawns and chai tau kuh..

I think my greatest fear so far is being unable to cope- or worst, what if I'm lost or something?? You'd think that by the age of 19 you'd be sufficiently independent to wander about the streets yourself, but I'm so road-blind that I'm starting to consider carrying a signboard with my home address written on it (Y'know, like what people do to ensure that their 5-year-old kids don't wander and get lost) :)

I'm taking it as a good sign that so far, everyone has been giving favourable comments about Tasmania...Unfortunately, I also heard first-hand from a 3rd year student there (who happens to be studying pharmacy...miraculous coincidence!) that the food was, like, unbelievably expensive, and that students usually shopped at night because it's cheaper that way...(In other words, grabbing all the leftovers just before the shop closes)...

Who knows? I could ask all I the people I want, ask them about life in Tasmania and all. But the truth? I won't be able to tell until I experience life there myself. Right now, I'm delving into self-motivational stuff, even listening to Kelly Clarkson's "Miss Independent" and hoping to blog to tire myself out into some sorta stupor that'll hopefully enable me to get some deep shut-eye...hahaha

Good news...why must they always be accompanied by bad ones??

Blessings are inevitably linked to curses, coming in a package that's impossible to seperate. It's true, y'know...Like the 2 incidences today.

Incidence 1: the comic book tragedy...
I just added 'Ragnarok' to my collection of comics, and by pure chance, I stumble across an almost-complete set...Cause for celebration? I think not. Now both parents are miffed at me. At first it was only mom, but when I was apparently more interested in reading my newly-acquired comics rather than to engage in a conversation with my dad, he was suddenly pissed at me, too.

Incidence 2: the foot-in-the-mouth tragedy...
I was really relieved that I had received a reply from the accommodation services saying that they've confirmed a place for me...until I realized that the person which I've been contacting for the past few days was a girl. I mean, how was I to know that Mavis was a girl?? That was a seriously horrible faux pas...to top it all, in every email to her I'd previously started it off with a rather noticable "Dear Mr..." Needless to say, lesson learned. Oh, yeah...there was this other instance whereby luck-both good and bad came, delivered right to my doorstep, I kid you not...via mail and email. 1 was a letter of offer for accommodation, the other was a letter about my results check. The offer letter came as relief in the form of email, relief because the anxious, long wait was finally over. The other letter, however...you guessed it: no errors detected. Well, you could say that it was a nice euphemism of stating something else...Here's my translation of the lines:

No error has been detected. The marks recorded have been allocated correctly. Thank you for applying-"Your results still suck; you'll have to accept the facts. Nice try, anyway."

Well, enough of the ranting and whining...