i'm starting to love NZ but...

i miss penang!



and i miss all the things i might be missing there.

i miss my family, my sara, my boyfriend and my girlfriends!



* * *

just when motherland starts to get blurry,
feels like unreality,
a dose of the past will help
because that's what i'll have for the next 8 months.
a taste of home, a glimpse of what i left behind.
but love goes wherever i go.
yours. mine. ours.

mostly about food

alas! there's no one here to take photos of me and tag me as the good people of penang usually did. well the friends that i hung out with and my wonderful boyfriend did anyway. so i have to resort to one of the most shameless (or shameful, depends on how you look at it) methods of getting my photo taken.

camwhore!



hey this is for the benefit of the lovely peeps back home who miss my squinty eyes and big mouth. this is all for you, not me
:P

i know you know you love me *grins*


***


uni life is crazy. i'm usually a very steady person who likes orderliness and can be stubbornly inflexible sometimes (to the exasperation of jt. hehe... sorry babe!), but i'm liking it so far. no i'm not into the clubbing partying scene (you can heave a sigh of relief now. go ahead, i know you were thinking it) but it's nice to let my hair down and be crazy and carefree once in awhile.

so far, i'm enjoying myself living where i am and my flatmates don't annoy me much so it's all good.

yesterday my equally crazy flattie (yes i know i know crazy has been repeated one too many times but this is my blog too bad for you linguists :P) made us this weird breakfast for dinner. yep you heard that right.

this is she


we had a regular buffet of... breakfast. with ice cream.


no your eyes are not deceiving you. they're bear pancakes with blueberry eyes and... a bellybutton?




***




and for the first time in my life, bought cookies from a girl scout fundraiser. the packaging is sweet considering that it's just girl scout cookies. i always imagined them to be homemade in plastic bags tied with ribbons. oh well...



ahh i miss penang food shoooooo much!

this is what's up

ooh haven't blogged in awhile.
have been somewhat busy getting to know people and stressing about my courses. aiks tis hard. oh i mean, difficult. people have this expectations that the english major has to have like perfect grammar and awesome vocab. hello i've just started here... don't expect so much of me... i'm stressed out enough. okla, classes are tough but not to the extend of which i'm exaggerating. haha.
but they are a challenge. just wanted to establish that. lol... now i feel annoying.

and big news big news...
i've made new friends yay!

i got locked out of my room today. thanks to the maintenance guy who emasculated my chair and locked me out of my own room. sob sob. ok no that was not what happened really. my flatmate helped me lodge a complaint about my faulty arm rest of my desk chair. so today while i was out, the fix-it guy came over to... fix it (oh how obvious was that). but little did i know that i would come home to find both the arm rests of my chair missing! oii is that your idea of fixing it?

some of my housemates are extremely messy people. yes i can find like dirty dishes in the sink and pots with food in them left on the stove. and the floor is filthy. geram betui saya. long story short, we brainstormed and came up with a duty roster of who cleans what on which week. hope it all works out fine.

and i think i've found a church that i want to be in as well. will still look around but i like that church. so we'll see how it goes.

i might've started to settle down here more than i have for the past 3 weeks. which is good. things don't bewilder me so much anymore. i've been here for almost a month now so i think it's time i start feeling more comfortable here now. of course i still miss everything penang, but i'm glad to be here too. now if only i could say the same about my studies...

campus is beautiful. today i just sat outside on the lawn and had my sandwich and read, while waiting for class. it was kinda like those moments you see on tv, and i don't know about you, but i've always dreamed of doing. but it's either really chilly or too sunny for words, so i don't get to do this very often. still... pretty pretty lotsa greenery.

i love hydrangeas

pretty kan?

sweet as!

for some interesting nonsensey commercial about nz, made by frenemy aus, click here


and i also found this commercial very funny.




no offense meant.

time is precious, so am i

i've got to go
i'm busy
i got disconnected
work
i'll be very busy
bye
see ya
i was busy
going somewhere now
see first
the time is not right
busy
they're waiting for me
got to do something
talk to you later
not free
tomorrow
some other time

honestly, when is the right time? when it's too late perhaps?

enrolment etc

on my way to uni
~it's scenes like this that creates poets and musicians of ordinary people~

enrolment day today... for me that is.
so i woke up early in the morning, made sure i had all the right documents, and made myself some sandwiches in case i got hungry (yeah i know... i'm so proud of myself), and left before 9am. sweet.and thanks to my daddy and the people at JMECC, i had a very painless and fast enrolment. i saw some people being asked to leave and get the right paperwork done before they were allowed to proceed (poor things) while i just sailed through the whole process which took me around 1 and a half hours.

received lotsa freebies too. people advertising and stuff mer. i like free stuff hehe, and goodie bags!

and i got my canterbury card yay! it's the uni student card which i can use to pay for photocopying, the library and other stuff.

my hair looks so messy eeps! why can't i ever take a nice picture for all my official cards etc?


and after that met up with a friend whom i met on sunday at the open house who happened to be studying at UC as well. christchurch only has 2 major unis while the whole south island has about 3 big ones so people who are here, are either in one of those 3. so no surprise there. we strolled around campus until it rained too heavily. oh yeah it's been raining non stop since yesterday. so sad aye. i'm a cat in that i don't like getting wet in the rain at all. it's fine if i'm warm cosy and dry inside, but ask me to tramp in the rain, and i'll probably start clawing at you. hiss.



we had lunch in the cafeteria at the student association building. it's pretty neat. and oh! i also made friends with a korean girl today who happens to live in my village as well. goodie i hope i won't be so lonely anymore.

here's how the cafeteria looks like:






i reckon i'm very blessed in that i get to experience campus life overseas; something that my parents never did and i know they wished they were able to. and what more, with all that beautiful foliage around me. scenery that leaves many raving about (yes nz is be-AU-ti-fool you can say that as much as you want to), christchurch is a pretty lil place which reminds me a lil of penang. yes weirdly enough it does. everything is rather nearby each other, they have the sea as do we. and it's a thriving city which is not too busy. except that penang is the BOMB and nothing can ever replace it.

anyway where was i? sorry got too carried away... oh yeah, i am blessed to have this so i should just stop complaining and enjoy it while it lasts. i mean, how often does one go through the whole undergrad uni experience?


oh yes, i just realised that i've only showed you pictures of how my room looks like. would you like to have a look at the whole apartment? you don't have a choice (hah!) cos here they are.

dining area & kitchen

living room and part of the balcony

not bad ler... for the hefty fees one pays for rather luxurious accomodation, for students' that is.

i'm still missing penang. but doing great so far :) i hope this lasts more than a day.

how i spent my sunday

i've got too much free time on my hands. so i should do something to keep me sane, hence this post here. i tried... i tried this morning when i woke up to stay positive about things. i really did attempt to. but as the day wore on and what with my severe lack of friends... here i am, holed up in my room yet again, lonely and desperately finding for things to occupy my mind and time.

otherwise i might just fall into another bout of depression.

man, i'm so bad at making friends. some people just do it effortlessly, and they just seem to fit anywhere. i wish i had that skill as well, but for me it's hard and scary (at times) to exert myself to make new friends.

i don't think i'll go all out and aggressively try to make friends here, just take it slow, join a club or something and see how it goes. meanwhile do bear with all my griping and moaning about my lonesomeness. you're so kind...


so, i do have some pictures from the 14th of feb, cny or vday if you please... it's all the same to me since i'm not with my family or jootatt to celebrate them with. yes i know, believe me i was really sad too. instead, i went to church in the morning, and later on, a scottish festival in the riccarton house and bush with my housemates.




we actually planned to just have lunch, but since the place we originally wanted to go to was near this event... you know the rest of the story.



yeah so, the whole event was pretty exciting. lotsa tartan, kilts, bagpipe playing; as per every scottish festival. but the interesting part was that they had an antique car exhibition




as well as people dressed up in period costume. i think victorian and georgian period which was wayyyy cool. i love loved their costumes and their mannerisms and everything. it's like, my heroes and heroines from all the books that i read have come alive.

here they are having a spot of afternoon tea on the lawn.



among the things on display there was the list on etiquette for gentlemen during picnics. lol. one of them was "to be amusing and entertaining to the ladies at all times". tee-hee... and another was "to assist the lady in sitting down and getting up, and to bring her food". i wish this still applied now.

and some highland dancing. my first time seeing it upclose.




oh and in case you were curious to know how my house mates looked like- here they are!




that's michael, me and megan.


it was a lot of fun, mostly because i hadn't seen this kinda thing before. but my poor feet ached a lot from all that walking.

hmm... since this is how i spent my sunday, i won't elaborate much on that... but it's something that i think you guys would like to hear about.

on sunday night, i went with a malaysian family to a cny open house. basically the people there were malaysians le. so after the eating and jollities, we went to the nearby basketball court to let off some firecrackers. tradition ma right? even though it's banned in malaysia. heheh. anyway... we were in our element when suddenly, this big burly white guy started shouting profanities and coming our way. he was like "f- off, f- off" all the way, and when we apologised and said we would leave, he wasn't happy enough and started really getting violent. he pushed a girl down, and because she was sortof carrying a younger girl, both of them fell. when one of the uncles in our group went over to help them up, he pushed him roughly to the ground. and i was like... 'should i run or should i go back and help?'. the man eventually felt that he had had enough of shoving people and left us. but not after a whole anti-asian "go home" tirade.

it was scary i tell you. what an orientation to nz. it kinda makes me very wary towards ang mohs now. it's very hard to trust them now that i've seen what some people can do. hmm... but i guess you can't judge all from the behaviour of one right?

more of it

i hope you're not sick of me and my photos yet





.
cos i want to to tell you about my day. at the park.



and how pretty lavenders look. though ever since i arrived, hydrangeas are officially my fav.





and how nice the weather was today. nice being sunny yet chilly enough to need a jacket. here, you see a diverse sort of dressing. there'll be people in skimpy tops and shorts, and at the same time there'll be people in warm coats and boots. so it kinda depends what your level of tolerance to cold is. which i think is bad news for me and a sign that i should get a nice coat that i like since i presume i'll be wearing that a lot. my tolerance towards cold being very minimal. blame it on my lack of fat. that, and my upbringing in a tropical country. i like warmness. to a certain extent. lol.
i know it's really extremely hot back in malaysia now so i shan't complain of the cold here.




and the cathedral that i visited as well. it's christchurch's biggest attraction ya know






and the hustle and bustle of the city in a place where life is walked at a slower pace. they take their time to do things, like the bus drivers will actually take their time to patiently answer all your questions, the counter lady will go through things throughly with you, which gets a bit frustrating when you're in a hurry.

well i haven't got much else to say. getting sleepy. goodnight!






hopefully i'll stop feeling homesick soon. it's hard when cny is a usual family time. used to loathe it but now there's no where else i'd rather be than with family.

more pictures

while the photo taking/ uploading mania is going on... have a look into my life on another side of the globe.


this is a part of the touristy area of the city. touristy or not i like it a lot. it really gives the city character, y know? those quiant old buildings, and parks, and the avon river.

i shall be city-ing again tomorrow. whee!




and saja lah you know... camwhore in the bathroom. lol. don't you think my cheeks became rosier since i came? am loving it! like natural blush. though these photos don't really justify them. my bathroom here is sparkly white, but for how long is another question...




ugh! my hair! i wish it would be more obedient.

i know it's not that cold here to be wearing a jumper but i like to be snug and warm. to them, it's a nice normal summer but to me it's like a bad case of too much air con. how am i going to survive the winter here?

by the way, the pinks and purples are way too cute! so bubblegum sweet. like me! :)

.


and here we have the books i'm reading now. i wish i brought more. jane eyre and david copperfield, okla i know they sound so yawn... will be borrowing more erm fascinating books next time from the library.






ahh you can see that i've already cluttered the bathroom with my treasures. i thought i was relatively neat but i now see how messy i really am. thanks to my housemate.

guess that's what you get for asking for tidy housemates in your application form.




i, we... did another tour around the campus grounds again this afternoon. so i finally have seen like, a sizeable portion of it yay.

here're some buildings. the science building i think. not really sure.




on the way to engineering department





and the little and older english building.





and man do i wish i was back in penang for vday and our anniversary. 2 years might not be very much but it's still something to celebrate.