2011: Looking back

Pardon my vague recollections. I always say every year that I should write stuff down more often, since my memory fails me a lot. XD

January

Still in summer school. Bane of my existence at this point.

February

Summer school came with exams. Who knew? Also, celebrated a couple of friends' birthdays this month.

March

And uni was back. This photo ... I don't know. This was after someone's graduation and we stopped by here after dinner post-Graduation. March was filled with lots of graduation ceremonies ...

April

... as was April. Well, not lots. Just the one. Had a so-so Easter and a terrible birthday.

May


Fan meet. Also, a friend came to visit from Japan.

June


Vivid Sydney. Supanova. End of semester cramming time. Was the sponsor for my cousin's confirmation. How old did I feel ...

July


Holidays and being utterly bored. Sleepover and ice-skating and Hooters and saying farewell to another friend who was off to Korea.

August

Food with friends while uni started up again.

September


Sleepover. Birthday. The Lion King 3D.

October

Sleepover and uni and ...

November

Exam time. Dying. K-Pop concert too. Said goodbye to a couple more friends who were off to Taiwan to study.

December

Summer school. Christmas shopping. Christmas. I loved the feeling around this time of the year and alas, over all too soon ..
An uneventful year. But hard still. I got through it somehow. I can't believe I'm so close to finishing my JD. Still a lot of things left undone. I always make New Year's Resolutions. Lots of people saying if it's worth doing you should start now but I think the extra push of the New Year. One of my NY's Resolutions is to finally complete a Project 365. If you don't know, basically, take a photo a day. It's a leap year though so it'll be Project 366?

The way I measure how good a year is has been is if I'm at a different place at the end of the year than I was at the beginning. And I'm at the same place. But I like a new year. A fresh slate! More opportunity for change!

So, here's to a bright, hopeful, prosperous 2012!

Hermits United

Been at home post-Christmas. I have absolutely no reason to go outside. I was supposed to wake up early today and go somewhere but alas, no. Woke up in the afternoon. Probably wasn't helped by the fact I was watching things until 5am. Am definitely going out tomorrow. Buy some things.

I've been catching up on TV shows. Finished Weeds season 7, Breaking Bad season 1. The DVDs of The Wire are on sale at the moment, so thinking of starting on that. Apparently it's really good.

Randomly picked up some of my old Korean notebooks. I want to attempt TOPIK (Test of Proficiency in Korean). Aiming to do the April Beginners exam. Keep my brain working. Watching stuff just really dulls your brain. Hoping to do N4 of the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) in December.

Also, it appears that I may end 2011 without my L's. Boo, self, boo.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas/long weekend! Mine was fun. Didn't get the things I wanted and I shouldn't complain but I always do. But I liked seeing how happy everyone was when they opened their gifts and liked them. And I can always just buy myself the stuff. Still have my list. XD Though, like my friend said to me, first world problem.

Also, this arrived today.



Present to myself. $32 USD then another $4 for shipping. On the day I bought it the Australian dollar wasn't on parity with the US dollar so it cost $37 AUD instead of $36.

So, enjoy the last few days of 2011. Hmm. This year, yeah ... happy to get rid of it.

3 sleeps to go

All my shopping is done. Which means no waking up early on Christmas Eve, trying to beat the crowds to do some last minute, stressed shopping. I was watching the news and Westfield Parramatta is trading until midnight tomorrow night. Crazy. I suppose if you're a shift worker you wouldn't have the time so it'd be really helpful. I wonder how busy it'd be ... I'd want to go just once for the experience I think.

I popped by The Face Shop in The Galeries Victoria yesterday. I was just going to buy random things for gifts for my cousins. They have baskets with a few things wrapped in a bag. So, I guess a gift bag? But rather it being priced as a set, they're priced individually. That is to say, everything in the bag is scanned. So, it's like buying it individually but they've taken the effort to put it in a bag to take away the thinking for you. Which is not a bad thing, really. I wouldn't know how to sift through all the products in the store and figure out some sort of combination of them that would work as a present.







Also, if you spend over $30 you can apply for a membership card. Though, the sales assistant at the register didn't offer this, which I thought was odd (from my limited Christmas retail experience). Every time I've been to Myer this Christmas shopping period I've always been offered a Myer One card, which I decline. Though, considering how much I spent at Myer this Christmas ... Also, every time I buy something at Kinokuniya I always think I should get a membership card too. Don't know if it's worth it now that I've already bought a whole bunch of stuff.

On holidays until the 10th January. Am not going to use my brain and forget about uni for a while. Well, as much as I can. I need to still work on some uni things ... ugh.

Also, long lines for Haigh's chocolate. I don't understand why.

QQ Desserts Internet Cafe

My friend had walked passed this last night and informed us of its existence. I don't have the exact address. It's on George Street, diagonal from World Square. It's next to the church. It's not officially opened. It officially opens this weekend with a "buy one get one free" offer. I'm looking at the flyer now and it says, more specifically, "buy any desserts to get a plate of QQ Frost dessert".






Half of the space is taken up with computers and the other with tables with cute stools and some board games on the top. In fact, the place is so new that the UNO cards still had the plastic wrapping on them.





Oh, I should have paid more attention to the names. But yeah. Desserts. You get the gist. XD




Apparently, they make their own ice-cream and bread. We had the toast, still warm, with mango and milk flavoured ice-cream. Not a mixture of the two. Just one scoop of mango and a scoop of milk ice-cream. I was not expecting the mix of corn, celery and pineapple inside the toast. Interesting flavour and combination. Not bad. Just new. And interesting.



Taro snowflake

Also, you guys, did not know there was Happy Lemon on George Street. Trying out later today.

9 to go

Day 2 of shopping. Wandered during the break between classes. Dropped by There Zakka on Quay Street. It's a cute little store with things like necklaces, camera straps, bags, pens, cups, notebooks. A whole range of things. Lots of cute little things which I think are from Korea, judging by the writing. I bought the necklace (below) and a "blue celeste" coloured gel ink pen (not pictured and only 99 cents!) I think it's one of those pens that you can use to write on Polaroid and/or Instax films. I have yet to try it but it seems like it could.



Then went to Kinokuniya after class was over today. So many people in the city!



I've been slowly buying one of my cousins Naruto. He gets some volumes on his birthday and then again at Christmas. Kinokuniya didn't have volume 12. Some early bird shoppers took it! On the shelf there was a quite a jump from volumes between about 13 to then 55 or something, from memory. So, I guess lots of people had bought all the ones in between.




Bought Looking for Alaska for myself. I don't really know what it's about but I've heard of it and seen quotes from it on tumblr. I still haven't finished/started 1Q84 yet either. An assessment is coming up soon so probably now is not the best time to be starting to read non-essential materials.

As I was searching through the bags that we usually keep all the ribbons and stickers for Christmas presents and stumbled across some old photos and some postcards.



This is from a Melbourne trip from years and years ago. I forget which year. 2006, me thinks. My dad had gone overseas and I just planned to go to Melbourne, with friends, without telling anyone except my brother. My dad took the digital camera with him and so I had to make do with disposable film cameras for the whole trip. I love going on the Neighbours tour. I love going to the street. I love it. I love riding on the mini-bus with mostly British/European backpackers. It's much more fun that you'd think because it's something that you only see on TV, usually. It's so much smaller in real life too. I also recommend the Neighbours trivia night. Alcohol, trivia, backpackers and a few Neighbours actors. A surprisingly fun night out. I've been on the tour and the trivia night twice. Great fun both times!



And some postcards from 2009. Bought but never sent. I thought the photos were really pretty and I didn't want to give them to anyone. So selfish. Might frame them. Ah, I want to go again! I wrote a whole list of the things that I wanted for Christmas but I decided all I really want is money to help be save up from a trip to Japan next year. Things. I don't really need things. There's this tumblr post, that I can't find at the moment, that says something along the lines of "life experiences brings more happiness than things". It was probably phrased better but that was the gist. And I tend to agree. So, no things. I want money so I can have life experiences.

Apparently there's good stress, eustress, and that's kind of what Christmas is to me. I kinda like that feeling.

Sleep then more shopping when I wake up. Fun fun :D

Only 10 shopping days left

and I've only bought presents for 3 people so far. Sort of. I bought a this necklace from the Kaboodle Designs stall on Level 1 Westfield Sydney for $25. I was just randomly looking at I really liked it. It's a necklace with a clock inside it. The recipient of this present is yet to be decided. XD





I also bought my brother Apple earphones. I bought my cousin 2 x Fujifilm 10 pack Instant Mini Film. JB Hi-Fi sells both the film and the Fuji Instax Mini. Jealous. So jealous. They need to start selling the film for the Instax Wide, which is what I got for Christmas last year.

Also, I'm on the lookout for a necklace with a red apple pendant on it and rings with skulls on them. I'm too easily influenced by J-Pop people XD. So, if anyone knows where I can get them, I'd be grateful. :)

Still so much shopping to do!

Summer school

It's like winter in Sydney. Like seriously.

Anyhoo, first week of summer school is over. It's been okay. Assignments are due soon and summer seems like it's going to be busy. And not in a fun way.

Just over 2 weeks until Christmas! My most favourite time of the year!



That's a poorly taken picture of my tree.

I was in Starbucks yesterday, sipping coffee, and they were playing Christmas carols and oh, I almost cried. I love Christmas time.

Yeah, just a random post.

:D

Blue Fish, Darling Harbour

My friend was leaving for the leaving the country for a year and one of things he wanted to do/eat before he left was have fish and chips. He was headed to Taiwan and then Korea and I'm kinda iffy on whether they have fish and chips. The Saturday before we had walked around Darling Harbour and all its restaurants and we remembered Blue Fish. Admittedly, it'd be easier and cheaper to go to a beach and order fish and chips from a local takeaway shop. But we didn't.

A waiter with an accent, I so thought he was speaking another language to us at first, enticed us with the prospect of a 15% discount between 4 - 6pm. We got the bill at 6:20 so it didn't apply. So get the bill early!






Blood orange martini - $15.50
Much more bitter than I thought it would be. I thought it'd be more orange-y tasting. Until my friend informed me that blood orange is kinda like grapefruit. So, sour. XD


1/2 dozen mixed oysters


Blue Fish Set Menu - $29.50
The set came with a glass of wine and dessert (picture below).



Fisherman's basket - $31.50
My plate. So good. Needs more scallops and less of the crumbed, fried things.

Overall, good but overpriced. Though, looking back at the photos makes me crave fish and chips, which I can get at my local fish market for, wow, 1/4 of the price of what I spent in total. Maybe even less.

• Find Blue Fish at 287 Harbourside Promenade, Darling Harbour, Sydney.