One down, another one to go

I officially finished my first semester yesterday. This means I've been here in Canberra for six months now. Either I have been so busy with working and dealing with new things, or time just passes so fast here in the downunder land. I'm quite surprised that I managed to survive my first semester of studying abroad without any drama.

The saddest thing is, many of my friends are leaving. Some are exchange students and others will attend Uni of Oslo for Peace and Conflict Resolution program offered here at my course. The latter group contains at least two best friends of mine in the course who help me getting through my study. It's sad to see them leave, but i know that i will see them again somewhere sometime...when I need free accommodation while travelling..hehe

Anyway, I'm leaving to Gold Cost on Thursday and this trip is gonna take three weeks, which means i'll come back to Canberra one day before the uni starts. Couldn't think about any other way to reward myself.

Love and Miss,
Yui

Important : Address Changed

Dear friends,

After having been one of the secret residents, I am now officially in room 405.
I moved out from my studio single for financial reason as it would help me saving A$40 per week. So if you want to reach me (which I really really really recommend you to), change the room no. from 408 to 4054.

More update to come after my final exam finished next Mon. However, this assumption bases on whether or not i will survive...

Miss ya heapz!

My 23rd Birthday!!!!!

My birthday cake that Melinda gave to me. Yummy!


Hey!hey!hey!

I'm officially 23 now...hmm...doesn't feel any different from last year but it was quite fun indeed. First of all, thankz for all the calls, msgs, and e-mails. And for those of you who forgot my birthday, you've been on probation which will affect my purchasing power for souvenirs when i go back!

So what did i do on my bithday? On the 18th i had class (yes people, that sux) and afterward Rei and I drove to Batemans Bay! Yes, we hired a car from Europcar again and this time they even upgraded a car for me! It took us only 2 hours to get there even though we made a stop in Braidwood, a cute historic town on the way. Since we didn't have much time to prepare things so we went shopping at Woolies and bought fish&chips for dinner. It was SO good!


Me&the car at Braidwood


At Fish&Chips


After that we drove around Batemans, trying to find a nice beach to stay. We went to a beach i've been last time for me to scream to the sea for all work loads i've got. Finally we end up in a car park in Malua Beach and had a free shower at a motel. We were really lucky that the motel owner let us had a shower there as it'd cost us A$90 for the room. We even got to use the towels! So that was a really good gift for me to know that there's still nice and generous people in the world.

That night we stayed in the car. It was cold and we didn't have any sleep and when i was about to get some sleep, Rei woke me up for fear that someone's trying to get into the car but turned out that there's nothing. At midnight we woke up and celebrated my birthday with non-alcohol Rose wine with strawberries..hmmmmmmm.


0.00 on 19/04/2007


The Sunrise at Batemans Bay

Next morning, on my birthday, we decided to drive to Sydney as we thought it might not be far from where we were now. Truned out that it took us 2 hours and a half since we didn't take the highway so we drove pass several towns from Nowra, Jervis Bay, and Wollongong. Surprisingly i was tired at all and the views are incredibly beautiful. Finally we got to Sydney and we drove to pick up Fabian and Patrick at the airport as they just came back from NZ. Then we fulfilled my birthday wish...going to IKEA!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, last time i was in Sydney with my cousin, she took me to IKEA and i fell in love with a table. At the time i had no idea how i was gonna bring it back to CBR with me as i travelled by bus. So this time, with such a big car and two guys to help me carrying, i went back for the table. As if we're never meant to be together, the table was sold out. So i bought another table, along with other pretty things to console myself. In total i spent around A$80 (฿ 2,400), apart from the car rental, it's so far the most expensive gift i've ever given to myself.

We came back to CBR around 4p.m. and had some rest before my other friends made a lovely dinner for me. There're Rei, Lin, Arima, Melinda, Muti, Runa, Yoki, Chris, and Miki. Later Fabian, Oliver, Patrick & Patrick, and Tolsand (i don't know how to spell his name) came by and we went out to ICBM. We didn't stay for long as we're all super tired (note: i'm very grateful to Rei for staying with me for the whole two days) so we went back to our rooms...when the time said 2a.m.

End of my birthday.

The Hail!

Dear Friends,

After realising that i haven't updated my blog for a while and you guys start to forget me, i decided to upload some photos. A couple of weeks ago there's a hail storm in Canberra and apparently ANU was the most affected place by the hail. I was getting ready to go to bed and had my curtain down when it started raining. First i thought it was just a normal rain but then my friends came to my room and told me to look outside. Everywhere was white! I've never seen hail before and neither have my firends (accept for Fabian coz he's german). So we went down and took pictures:

My Address

Hit me at



Room 408
UniLodge
25 Childers Street,
Canberra City,
ACT 2601,
Australia

Mobile: (61)4-109-26020

What you can send to me: Letter, postcard, MONEY!(recommended)
What you cannot send to me: Food(even though i'd love some, but it's more likely that it'll be stuck at quanrantine unit), and any donation letter like "Kra-tin"

Cooking Class and other pics

From left: Guobing (China), Jahir(Indo), Me, and Mutti(Indo)

From Left: Guobing, Hiep(Vietnam: I stole these pics from him), Jahir, Hans(Vietnam), Mutti, Musharaf(Bangladesh)

These are the pics from last week when I had cooking class at uni. My group got an easy menu which is just fried vegetable. It's quite tasty.

Something I don't wanna talk about, but oh well...

21/01/2007

Today is the most embarrassing day in my life! This evening I decided to cook salmon for dinner after enduring with assignment for all day. I bought a piece of salmon from supermarket the day before and cooked half of it last night. At that time I just stir fried it as usual. But this time I decided to cook stake salmon using salted butter instead of oil for better taste. So I cooked and everything went well. Then suddenly the fire alarm rang! I was pretty sure that it was me so I ran downstairs to tell Tom, an officer who works here, to turn the alarm off but he insisted that we had to evacuate coz there might be a real fire. So you now get picture, everybody went out of building, two fire trucks came, firefighters went to my room, everything was so stupid and embarrassing. Good thing that I know almost of the people here and I apologized to everyone. They are all very nice and said that it couldn’t be helped. But I still feel extremely guilty and embarrassed.

After finishing my salmon (it was tasty and not overcooked) my friends and I went the Academy again. This time we celebrate our 2nd assignment by dancing till 3a.m., which means we’d been dancing for 5 hours!!! Matt, the ANU officer who also works as a DJ there, said that we’re crazy to stay that late coz he does only because they pay him. I have to agree and think that I’m done with dancing for the whole month, or semester.

National Museum

13/01/2007


It’s been super hot for two days now! Not only the heat, but also the dryness that are driving me crazy. Yesterday I went to the National Museum as a part of our IAP field trip. First we were supposed to walk to there, but the IAP staffs were kind enough to drive us there by using their own cars even though it’s just 20 mins walk. The museum is incredible! I’ll surely go back there again.


My friends and I spent the rest of the day at the library, surfing the internet and avoiding the heat. Finally I came back to my room and cooked. I had ham and cheese omelet with rice and steamed broccoli! It tasted alright and I’m so proud of myself! Hehe. After that I was blanked and had nothing to do so I went to the common room and met a couple of Ta’s friends from Laos. We played pool together and I finally got a chance to use the internet and update my journal.

I cleaned up my room and did all my laundry this morning. It’s quite a job but surprisingly I enjoyed doing them. In the afternoon while I was chilling and reading newspaper in the common room, the fire alarm rang. At first I wasn’t sure if it’s a false alarm or not but then people walked out of the building so I followed them. Turned out that there’s just smoke in a room and nothing more serious than that so we went back to the building after the firefighters were gone. Phew!

Finally we decided to explore the night life here. Lin, Jac, Rei (another ALA from Indonesia) and I went to a club in town called “Academy”(with no Fantasia na hehe). It was so cool as they ban smoking there so I really enjoyed dancing with my friends. We were there from 11pm-2am and did nothing but dancing like crazy. But I don’t think I’ll go back there soon as there’ll be loads of assignments waiting for me next weekend.

Summary of my journals. Warning: It's a long post!

08/01/07

We were supposed to go to the Orientation at 9.15 in the morning, so I set the alarm at 8.00. You see how much time I planed to spare. However, I woke up at 7.30 and just couldn’t force myself back to sleep because of the excitement. I’ve been worried all night that my mobile phone won’t ring. Maybe I need a real clock here coz I’ll trust it more.

We didn’t do much in the morning. Just filling some forms, taking pictures, listening to the officers, were all we did. The highlight was we got free food all day( well, there’re free morning tee and biscuits and lunch, then we collected the leftover from lunch for dinner). In the afternoon we had to do an IT test coz we’ll go to some computer classes during this course and they need to know what level we are so that they’ll put us in a right group. I think I did alright. It was a multiple-choices test and “I don’t know” was one of the choices. I chose that for a couple of questions. There’re many terms that I just couldn’t figure out what they are, for example, “absolute formulas”---excuse me?


09/01/2007

I had Thai food today!!!!! It was fabulous!!!! Jacqui, Ta, Phalin(another ALA from Cambodia), and I went to an Asian restaurant run by Thai people. We ordered Tom Yum Kung, Lab Kai, and Yum Nuey. We ended up spending $10 each, which is not bad at all for those yummy dishes. After that we headed back to the apartment and watched movie. The other two haven’t watched Odd couple II and were curious about it so I showed it to them. Then Jacqui went out with her friend from South Africa while the rest of us decided to try playing pool. That’s a lot of fun and I did a very surprisingly terrific score. Maybe I’ll turn pro soon…hehe.


11/01/2007

I got my student card! But I still cannot use the internet at my place because of some technical problem. So I might just go to the library tomorrow. It makes me think of how much internet has influence over people lives. Today we do everything online, enrolling, banking, keep contacts. I’ve been driven crazy for the whole week because I could not use it. But today when I tried to enroll online, there was a problem with the network. Thus I have to go to the Admission Office and give the form to the officer who finished my enrollment in no time. So sometimes internet can help things a lot easier but at the same time can be a big pain.

Tonight Ta, Lin (Phalin), Jacqui, and I planed to cook together. Before that we went shopping and I bought a small tub of a mouth-watering fruit salad back with me for tomorrow’s breakfast. Then we went to Lin’s room and start our cooking. Lin did most of work while we just helped her with chopping and cleaning. We had fried chicken, fried beef, and chicken soup. Everything was in Chinese style and they all tasted like heaven.
After that we had been enjoying our conversations until 10 pm. Then the rest of us retired to our room.

Tomorrow we are going to have a field trip to the National Museum, which is great! Bad news is we have to walk there and it’s going be 36-38C tomorrow, plus rain.

Quite Day

This is my apartment. As you can see there's not many people around.

07/01/07

It’s been a quiet day. I did my laundry and clean my room for the first time. It was the first time I use the coin-operated washing machine and dryer, as well as the vacuum machine! Now I don’t complain about how small my room is anymore. It is a lot easily to clean. After finished all that, I went out with my new friend, Jacquie, to find an adaptor for her laptop. We had been to all the shops in the area and still no luck. When we came back, I couldn’t believe it’s only noon. I tried to read but my mind didn’t want to study so I watched TV and finally called Ta to watched “Odd Couples II” together at the common room. It was hilarious as always and I’m really glad I brought it with me. Then I came back to my room and cook myself a Mama Tom Yum Kung!

Like I said, it had been a quiet day so nothing much happened. I’ll go to uni tomorrow, hopefully it’ll be fun!

06/01/07

Ta and I have gone house-hunting for two days now and no good news returned. I feel sorry for her as she really needs to find a house coz her sister will come to stay with her soon and Unilodge doesn’t allow guests to stay overnight. So far we saw 3 houses but none is good enough yet. The major problem is the transportation as she wants to be close to the uni so that she can walk, or it has to be near a bus stop. I am thinking about getting a bike, but still a bit scared by my biking ability and the way the traffic here works. Since I have been here, I assume that I have been walking for more than my entire life. I also discovered that my faculty is quite far from my apartment. I told you guys that I live on-campus, but the campus is HUGE!!! ANU is like TU Rangsit, or event bigger! I live in between the uni and the city while my faculty is in the back of the uni. I will certainly have to find a bus and its timetable soon.

I went to the Thai Embassy yesterday, which was quite an adventure. I asked the bus driver to drop us somewhere near the Thai Embassy and he was so kind that he dropped us exactly opposite to the Embassy. We would be extremely grateful if only it wasn’t on the highway! We did cross the road safely and when I started thinking that this trip would be fine, we got lost on the way back. It seemed like the suburb is full of international embassies and the people who live there all have cars, so every time we asked for the direction of the bus stop, they just couldn’t answer. Then someone at the embassy drove pass and showed us the way so we finally got back to the town.

At last, I bought the rice cooker and other cooking utensils. At first the rice cooker was sold out and there was only an example left on shelve. I asked the shop assistant if I could buy it, and he finally managed it for me. But I haven’t used it yet as I still don’t have any rice. However, I have cooked my dinner for 2 days now. Both are spaghetti Bolognese with cheese. Tonight is more special as I add some broccoli and smoke ham in it. The dessert is to-die-for strawberries that I finished the whole box at once ( there were around 12 of them).

I need a new menu, any suggestion?

Something weird

04/01/07

Went to Dickson, the suburb where China town locates, today to look for rice cooker. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I’m gonna cook! After calculating the rent I’m going to pay each month, I have like 100 a week left. So cooking might be cheaper than eating out as it costs around $7 up each meal. I don’t know if most people are still on holiday or anything but it’s not really “China Town” as the area is kind of empty. But there’re many Asian shops and restaurants there. On the way back I met a lady at the bus stop and then we began to talk about how late the bus was. Then the weird conversation started;

Lady: Oh dear, you’re really pretty, you know that?
Me: (a bit shocked and embarrassed by the new topic) Um..thank you.
Lady: Seriously, you are very pretty. Are you Thai?
Me: (more shocked and confused) Um..yes. How do you know that?
Lady: (Laughing loudly) I just know it. Nevermind.

Then the bus came and we ended the conversation. I was left in doubt, didn’t know whether to be happy for the compliment or not. While we were walking back to the apartment after getting off the bus, there was a car full of teenagers driving pass us. Suddenly one of the boys opened the window and yelled at us. Again, I was shocked by such an act as it had never happened to me before. Ta explained to me that some Aussies just don’t like asian people and there’re still ridiculous racialism in this country. She was thrown by an egg by this kind of people when she studied her bachelor in NSW, but luckily it didn’t hit her. I was so sick by hearing this and soon came to an ironic thought about how much effort the Australian government has put to strengthen the relationships with other countries while some citizen just want to isolate themselves.

If I met those boys again, I would say : “Idiot, your government pays me to be here!”

My Room!

So I arrived in Sydney around 7am (Aus time, which is 4 hour faster) and finally went through the immigration. Everything went well. I didn’t even have to pay for the extra weight limit. For those who didn’t see me off at the airport, I got 2 big bags weighting 25 each. So yes, I brought 50 kg in total. My dearest dad asked TG for 60 kg, but we couldn’t find a way to contact Qantas which I’d be flying with to Canberra. So I was preparing to pay a lot for the extra weight but the lady at the check-in counter just let me through without charging any money. Hurray!!!!!

An hour after that, I arrived in Canberra and met ANU officers, Carol and Stephanie, who came to pick me up at the airport. They also introduced me to Ta, another ALA awardees from Laos. We were taken to our dorm, or I should say apartment called Unilodge. It just opened on the day I arrived so I was the first 5 people who moved in. I’ve got almost everything in my room; TV, microwave, telephone, lamps, fridge, bin, toaster, electric kettle, heater, bed, and wardrobe.

In the afternoon, Stephanie took Ta and I to a bank to open bank accounts. I was given A$ 5000 cheque as establishment allowance which will be effective in a few days. Then Ta and I decided to eat in for dinner, so we bought pizza and baked it and watched Garden State that I brought with me, but couldn’t finish it as we encountered some light problem as the Sun still shone even thought it was 8pm.!

The Journey Starts

My last day in Thailand was kinda confusing. I woke up early in the morning and go to a hair salon. My first intention was just getting a hair cut, but then the hairdresser successfully persuaded me to have it straightened. It didn’t finish until noon, and my parents were getting restless for fear that I might miss my flight (which I don’t know if I should be happy or sad about that).

Finally got to the airport around 3pm. It was so crowded that I spent most of my time standing in the line, waiting to check in. Come to think about it, I should have had someone doing it for me and instead I should stay with my friends and families. I am really thankful for everyone who came to see me off, even though they made it harder for me to not crying. Also, thank you for those who couldn’t make it to the airport for all the calls.

Our new airport really surprised me in many ways. First, there’re so many shops and brand-name goods that I almost thought I was in Paragon. Second, there’re heaps of good restaurants inside. It even has IBerry!!! And I finally found all the critically acclaimed decorations, which are very fancy as well as wasteful. So now I know why it took a lot of money to build this airport.

Flying with Thai Airways made me really miss Singapore Airlines. Don’t think that I’m a traitor or anything, but SQ is just better! It has personal screen which you can control your channel and play games! But TG has good services so that’s substituted. Only the cappuccino cheese cake they served could make it all up for me. I watched Open Season (for the second time) and Material Girls starring Hilary Duff. The other times I just read newspaper or looked out the window (yes, I got a window seat). The bonus of this flight was I got a chance to see both sunset and sunrise. They were indescribably beautiful.

And that consoled me from being away from home.