ALLYSWAY- my weekly highlights

This week I've decided to post 'allysway' to celebrate my first week of uni, and one less day of work!
I could easily embed an 'allygator' post here about the monotony of lectures and the inevitable half an hour of textbook and society advertising before each lecture; but instead I will tell you about the freebies of O week.
So over the last few days I've managed to collect a vast array of pens, canvas bags, a vibrantly colourful collection of post it notes, rulers, a microfibre towel, a canteen/bottle, a tonne of coupons, a keyring bottle opener, highlighters, cans of coke, muffins, snow cones, and other strange concoctions and some other bits and pieces- I love freebies! ( I am sad however that I missed out on free pancakes and  usbs and gym bags and battery charging ipod cases (which I actually really need!), but nevertheless free stuff is always good and I am satisfied with my week's worth of hoarding.)

First day of Autumn

What a way to signify the end of Summer with a down pour of rain- and a runny nose. My sore throat seems to be getting slightly better, I've been trying to cure it with everything- salt water, honey, grapes, vitamin c, bottles of soft drink - I'm not really sure if they actually work but let me tell you one thing, one cup of chilled ice tea is a very welcome temporary relief for a burning sore throat.

Today I woke up early to buy tickets online for a camp and I lingered around the computer waiting for tickets to be released. Turns out I couldv'e woken up about an hour later and I still would've been fine. As a non alcohol drinker I also freaked out when I read that a huge chunk of the ticket goes toward the cost of unlimited alcohol, so I guess I'll just have to get my money's worth of lemon lime and bitters (sad I know).

Tues 26 Feb

Today I made it to 200 pageviews!!! Woot!

So I started Uni yesterday and what a hectic day it was! Sadly I have made no new friends except perhaps a bag filled with brick weighing textbooks and I spent most of the day hanging around the courtyard, collecting free diaries and pens, signing up for stuff and trying to get away from people who tried to sign me up to their random clubs. At one point one of the clubs signed me up themselves after getting enough information from me from conversation, even though I told them I was busy every day they have a meeting! I also had my first lecture which I won't bore you with the details with because I would fall asleep before then and I ended up looking at Oscars best dressed links anyway.. 

Wednesday 20 Feb

Today I'm so tired from working late and next week I've been scheduled to work even later*sigh*.
Anyway I realised last night that my holidays are fast dwindling away and that I've had almost a whole 4 months off already! It's so incredible how the holiday routine is so easy to fall into even if sometimes it feels as if you're running out of purpose and things to do; but now that they're almost over I've realised how much there is to do and that I'll probably never do them! (for instance, I've been 'cleaning my room' for four months and the most I've chucked out is a scrap of paper)

Tuesday 19 Feb

Today I walked around the whole block which is on a hill so I literally went round and round the (mini) mountain and I put the clothes out to dry (that's right Mum, I do do work at home away from the computer). It's now 9am, which is amazing because I'm usually fast asleep, happily in another world at this time, but the sun was penetrating my curtains at about 7am and my room was slowly cooking me so I had to wake up. I managed to hand out two flyers today at a bus stop and it was really awkard even though I vaguely knew one of the two people. I'm still looking out for a new job, I've been sending resumes here and there, checking online, obsessively looking in the corner of store windows quite often to find that the exciting piece of paper is just a security notice or opening hours sheet. I also need to buy uni books, but once again there is a Chinese New Year superstition that means I can't buy them till next week after the New Year's fortnight, so by the time I get my books we'll be through a few chapters already. And for lunch today I'm looking forward to spag bol! Yum! : )

Yesterday was Sunday

As you can probably guess from the title, today is Monday and this morning I woke up at 7.45am after missing two alarms, and scrambled out of bed, skipping breakfast, hoping to get to the bus stop in time and yet I still missed the 8:10am crowd. I felt better than the school girl though, who was practically falling off the kerb frantically waving as the bus drove right past. I might have done that a few times in my school career, but I was always pretty calm, if not exctied, about missing the bus and spending class time strolling to school.

So yesterday was Sunday and I finally managed to buy some work clothes that fit! (and weren't too expensive.) So now I have a pair of black work pants and a black skirt, so on sweltering 30 degree days I no longer have to stand outdoors in my black winter jeans, absorbing heat and sweat and my endless moans. Luckily I bought a pair of peach flats about 3 weeks ago, because my favourite black ones are officially falling to pieces, and I'm not allowed to buy shoes until the end of this week because of some Chinese New Year superstition. I also got back in time to watch 'Elementary' which I've been following since it started airing on tv  (my mum is an avid Sherlock Holmes fan) and like most crime shows it's pretty fascinating, slightly predicatable, and plays on my mind enough to keep me awake for an extra half hour at night and make me slightly paranoid in the morning. I've never been a crime fan but I have definitely grown a lot since the days when I had nightmares after watching Mission Impossible.

I also went to a huge CNY dinner on Saturday in the city, but that was pretty average; basically everyone was frocked or suited up around big tables with nice large plates of food that was served after the lion dancing and the inevitable rambly speeches and photos of politicians who all admirably but awkwardly ended with a couple of lines of mandarin and an energetic and completely off  'gung hei fat choi.' There were more speeches than usual, not surprisingly, I mean it is election year and some even unsubtly alluded to the election and its date. There was also this new rule where raffle winners have to stay in there seat and wait for people to bring their prize to them, which was pretty underwhelming compared to every other year when the winners run to the stage shouting 'I won, I won'. ( I did that last year, perhaps that's why they changed the rules). Sadly we didn't win anything even with fifty odd tickets in the raffle draw, which was a slight let down.
   

ALLYGATOR-my weekly bite at the world

This week I was going to pass on 'allygator' because it seemed too selfish to complain when nothing has really gone wrong these past few days. That was until this afternoon.

I love my house in suburban Sydney, I really do. It's spacious, it's on a peaceful street filled with kids on bikes and trees, we have a vibrant garden bursting with colour- and here lies the problem- why do people feel the need to cut down trees and trim them and blow leaves every week, for goodness sake, just let them grow. Right now my left ear is being bombarded with the noise of our neighbour across the road doing some hideously loud mechanical tree chopping in the backyard, which has been going on for the last few hours. In my right ear, the house on the other side is also trimming hedges with one of those higher pitched mechanical saws. I have closed all the windows and there is no place in my house which is free from blaring tree cutting noise. Honestly how many trees do you need to cut people? SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT AND MY EARS AND MY SANITY PLEASE!!!

Today I went to a cafe

I'm beginning to understand the whole idea of sitting in a brightly lit rustic cafe, sipping on a warm cappucino with a plate of cinnamon and ricotta waffles (even if it's not in Florence, sigh, one day). I went out to brunch with some friends and whilst it was rather costly for a plate of four waffles, it was a very quaint and artistic cafe with the whole antique aspect going; wooden shelves, little bronze dial up phone figurines holding up table numbers, menus printed on scrunched brown recycled paper in typewriter font, brown opaque glass bottles of salt (I admit these looked like something out of the doctor's clinic) - its like the place was designed for instagram. But what a welcome relief from the stunning silence of the office where the only thing we ever hear is the deep whir of the air conditioner and the person who frantically types. If only I'd gone to the cafe last Wednesday..(that's a Taylor Swift reference btw!) 

an exciting valentine's day

This afternoon I spent 6 and a half hours facing a computer writing year 5 math questions so really I shouldn't be typing anymore or looking at a screen for that matter. But at work today we all got given a little red pocket with 5 bucks tucked in it! Which was really sweet considering most people who work there aren't even Chinese. So I'm slowly being won over by the nice perks and food and stuff although that I guess even that doesn't really alleviate the tedium of paper work.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone! Seeing as I'm lonely and about to go to work today I thought why not share the love with my fam & friends (&dog) anyway. So here's my new wall of hearts! Enjoy : ) (and I hope you guys can work out which category you're in!) 

Chinese New Year! Feasts, Fate & Fortune cookies

Before I begin, I'd like to wish you all a very
Happy Chinese New Year Week!!! May you live long and prosper and fill your tummies with bowls of pork crackling and leen goh!

On Saturday night, CNY eve, we went out to our local Chinese restuarant where we ate one of those huge family banquet dinners with our cousins and aunts. Like Christmas eve, the Chinese New Year Eve dinner is a massive event on the restaurant calendar so the place was bustling with chatter and laughter with people bellowing toasts to the new year. It was ridiculously crowded-the waiters were hectically squeezing though crowds, running with teapots and bills, glass spoons and plates clattering and breaking here and there; we had a table reservation in the second dinner session that night and expectedly the restaurant was running over schedule leaving tonnes of people huddled outside waiting, more like haggling, for a table.Thankfully my aunt is a heavy tipping yumcha regular so our wait wasn't too long. The food though took forever to come, so long that the woman at the table behind us went beserk and threw a fit at the waiters.Eventually we ate a delicious feast of shark fin soup and king crab and oysters and chicken and noodles and mushrooms and roast pork and tong yuun in a black sesame sweet soup, while listening to B-list Chinese tv celebrities dressed in Chinese Opera getup sing festive songs in piercing voices. On the bright side they gave us red packets with little red new years lollies in them. It was a fun night, filled with food galore- the table was bursting with colour at one point, and it's always good to catch up with relatives even if our table chatter inevitably turns into some heated debate over some trivial matter. What did feel like it was missing this year though was the lion dancing and blaring drums which is always my favourite part (beside the roast piglet).

The next day, New Years Day, we woke up at midday to a scorching Summer day and after lunch drove the hour drive to Bondi to cool off. Sadly, by the time we got there it started pouring, the bus stops were swarmed with people trying to get out of the rain, and I remebered that I'd left all my clothes outside to dry. There were all of about ten people in the water with almost no towels laid out on the beach and as much sand space as we wanted, which is such an unusual sight. We even found a parking spot a few streets from the beach, a miracle compared to our usual spot a good half an hour walk away-around the corner, through a park, up a few hills. We bought fish and chips and a box of calamari and chips. To my mum's sudden distress, she told us that calamari is a New Year no-no- in Chinese it becomes 'Tsao yau yu' which translates to 'getting fired'. But I love calamari rings so I ate them anyway, which is great considering it's only taken me a few months to find my first job. This was however better than last year when I bought a book on New Year's Day- book translates to 'shue' or 'lose' and I did in fact have a pretty unlucky, loserish year. I also really want a new pair of comfy shoes for uni, but I have to wait another 2 weeks because apparently 'shoes' sounds like a sigh in Chinese which is yet another bad omen. I even deterred my friends from buying sale $10 heels just in case. I'm also not allowed to eat fortune cookies- not so much because they carry an omen but because my parents are convinced that putting paper inside them is unhygienic.

Seeing as I didn't want to waste our trip to Bondi I braved the wind and waves with my jacket on until my mum got stung by a blue bottle; so we drove home and ate vegetables and vermicelli, which is a must on New Years Day. Our leen goh, a sweet, jelly like- new years cake very unfortunately turned mouldy so we ate the dragonfruit instead. And so far that's it for my CNY 2013!

Allysway-my weekly highlights

Having been working long hours, I've almost forgotten the luxury of sitting at a dining table eating dinner with the fam (or for our family at the kitchen bench cos our dining table is perenially filled with my parents' newspapers and catalogues and folders). So having eaten most of my meals at the train station between train changes or clambering bits of sandwich into my mouth whilst running to work, my highlight this week is coming home weary and unmotivated and seeing a homely clingwrapped plate of warm rice and beef and cauliflower on the kitchen bench. That really made my day!

Allygator- my weekly bite at the world

This week I have nothing to complain about, amazingly enough. I am temporarily content and am loving my doses of white choocolate and strawberry icecream.

I'm ridiculously exhausted from doing tediously long hours of primary school homework, where my eyes end up glazing over hundreds of additions and subtractions and close passages on monkeys. But I was totally comforted when one of my friends told me that she had to wake up at 5:30am for a 7am coffee shop start, working on award wage. So I guess doing 8 hours of primary school work isn't quite that bad, after all a job's a job.

Tues 5 February 2013

Today I went to work and did 8 hours of Yr 6 homework. Algebra, general ability, reading comprehension, problem solving.. it's like school all over again! And to be completely honest I think that's the most homework I've ever done in my life. Even for the hsc I didn't study that much! (Which probably explains why I'm where I am right now.) At least at school though, in math class, we could eat or plug into music and do a few questions before our inevitable social math session- at work we're under contract not to chat, not to eat, not to listen to music, so every time I reach for that tuna sandwich in my bag I think, no stop, I want to get paid! If only they made us work like that in school. I would've been such a genius : /

Monday Feb 4 2013

Today I went to the orthodontist for the last time! I'm not sure how that's an interesting subject at all, but the journey there was definitely far more exciting than the destination (not terribly cliche at all, I know.) So the trains were delayed massively all day but somehow in the afternoon I was lucky enough to get on every train with less than 5 minutes wait even though they weren't running on schedule! Going there I sprinted to catch a bus to get an earlier delayed train, rather than my usual half an hour uphill walk, because I wanted to be on time for my last appointment and to avoid the after school rush. So I managed to scramble on to the bus and catch the train thinking I'd only be about ten minutes late as there was meant to be a 40 minute delay, but somehow I must have gotten some super early train that got seriously delayed and I made it with 30 minutes to spare!

That's my story for the day. Oh, and then I bought myself a raisin bun : ) yum