omg. it's pink!



omg. it's pink - and i want it!!! as i was dis-interestedly flipping through a hairhouse warehouse magazine i chanced upon the exact same type of straightener that i bought almost 2 years ago (and faithfully still use today, so obviously the quality was alright, though the ceramic plates are wearing out a little bit i think ). but this one is PINK! omg! i want!


even better. it's actually the same price as my straightener was, (which is really cheap!), only $19.95.

wah~ why didn't i get that tutoring job the other day?? damnnit i could've had a pink straightener for only giving half a lesson to the girl! damn class time clashes! perhaps i shall cook dinner every thursday and friday night (had to last night) in an effort to contribute to the household chores and in return ask my parents for some money.

i want some new skinny leg jeans so i can break out all my boots, (seeing as im not wearing thermals under my jeans anymore i really do need more than one pair so i can alternate, why didnt i see ahead of time?). but i found a really nice dark grey denim pair in a cheap chinesey shop on swanston the other day and i love them. fit really nicely and look cool. silly things are $35 though. yes, that's right! im a big spender! $20 straighteners and $35 jeans. woo!

but yes, perhaps i can negotiate some sort of allowance from my parents - cos there's no way they will voluntarily fund me buying more things after china. :-( oh, but back to the pink straightener (im so like a little kid at xmas! lol) . i want!


i'm not exactly sure when it happened, cos as a child my mum always dressed me in pink (hot pink trackie pants, pale pink puffy sleeved dresses, hot pink stripey jumpers, pale pink skirts etc), so i developed a natural distaste for the colour pink.

but sometime in recent years i discovered myself quite liking certain shades of pink clothes, and various pink little trinkets, and now i find myself absolutely in love with everything pink - usually just for the ridiculous fact that it is pink!

example #1: pink kitchenware and appliances.


i saw a box of pink saucepans for sale at the KMART in Eastland about 3 weeks ago. somehow my mother wasn't at all convinced that they were necessary, but i fell in love! *sigh* can you think of anything more obscurely useless to me?

it's all very well to deck my kitchen out (not that i have one, and as everyone knows im not very into domestic things anyway, so what is the point of them?) in that gorgeously sickly shade of pink that they coat iced donuts in.

it's also the same shade as the Barbie camper van too, if you remember.

but yes, it's all very well to deck out my kitchen in this wonderful shade of girlyness, but what a deterrent for guys or pink-haters to enter my kitchen! perhaps not such a valuable buy afterall, but nevertheless...i still want!

(lol this entry is so going to turn out to be a weird version of an online xmas list of all the random things i've ever considered having).


example #2: computer, phone + electronic accessories etc.

these things basically speak for themselves. they're useful AND they're pink! want!


example #3: other random assortment of stuff that's pink and cool.







yes, im already guilty!! what follows are some example of things i have bought, purely because they were pink, rather than for their usefulness.

example #1: pink ice-skates.

yes, that's right. i bought a pair of pink ice-skates, and i specifically went searching for a pair of pink ones. i walked away from many market stalls because they only had blue or black or white or red. no! they wouldn't do! apart from perhaps a 3yo child i was going to be the only person in the uni who had a pair of pink skates...and i believe i was!


example #2: pink discman.

yes, i have a pink discman. hot pink, rather than donut pink, but pink nonetheless. and despite the fact that i did actually need a discman i bought this one over others precisely because it was pink. as a bonus i discovered it also plays the music tracks from VCDs (video cds) too. very handy, as VCDs are popular in china unlike here.


example #3: pink coat

despite already having others which are much warmer and therefore useful i had to have a pink coat. it's very sweet, and actually will probably suit Melbourne winter just fine. yay! it has a use!


example #4: pink formal dress

ok, i have a million formal dresses now all hanging beautifully in my wardrobe, but absolutely no occasion to wear any of them to! i probably have about 8 formal style dresses now. and i think i've worn maybe 2 of them. but yes, this is my pretty pink one... a stupid, but very beautiful waste of money for the time being.



but i know the obsession with pink things has gone too far when i admit that i actually really really want a pair of pink gumboots too...



.... oh why isnt it christmas??


... what's pink that you want?

oh no.

oh no. it's happened again. always when im in a busy time of life, particularly school work wise (coming up to the end of semester etc) something silly like this always happens.
i am, once again addicted to a Taiwanese dramas.

it all started so innocently. i remembered i found a new dvd i'd bought at the end of my trip in china, so i decided, 'what the hell. i'll shove it in and see if i can understand any of this drama'. my hopes were not all that high, cos dialogue wise i really cant follow much of tv shows in chinese. im almost definite i really more on the visuals, almost entirely.

but anyway, i put in the disc and got a suprise when the menu came up, because not only did it have the series i was expecting, but there was the end 10 or so episodes of a different drama series too! *shock*

even more suprising, although the drama i bought the disc for is several years old already, the drama that was an added bonus was a 2006 one! and i recognised it!!

i never had a tv in china, and so didnt have much opportunity to watch it, but occasionally fate had it that i would cross paths with one. sometimes this meant crashing jess's room to get the occasional fix of korean dramas, or terrible 'i am your father' mid-day soapie dramas. other times it was at Auntie's house, and usually beijing opera which nainai the grandma liked or weird music shows.

however another occasion was in the cafe (as in an actual cafe, where they sell coffee and cake like things, not the cafeteria where they sell mass produced, yet somehow still good quality meals) in the library at the New Campus with leo. some of you may not be aware, but i lived and went to school at the Old Campus, which was more picturesque, smaller and quaint perhaps, yet Leo was at a different campus, the new campus - which is huge, very modern, cool and ... grey? lol. by car i think it only took about 20-25mins drive, but by bus it would take about 1 hr, and my poor baby leo used to take bus to see me a million times a week! dedication!

one or two memorable evenings however i found myself at the New Campus. (one was accompanying lou to an English Corner meeting, which in itself is a funny story, as she was drunk from a class party at a bowling alley, and English Corner - a meeting of uni students who are all english learning enthusiasts - is basically like feeding a lamb to the wolves when a foreigner is involved. after trying desperately to fade into the back wall of the lecture hall and failing miserably we took to the stage, where to cover up for lou's drunkenness i was extra cheerful and excited, so people would think that this was what we two were always like,...and not that one was actually intoxicated since about 2pm that afternoon!

so lo and behold we gave interesting self-introductions, where we bad-mouthed our room-mates (ourselves), talked good of the caf (which the uni students all hate), proclaimed that cheap is good, and the caf especially good because it is so, and to top it off when asked questions about whether i could sing i led them in a hokey-pokey song and dance exercise. left them a tad confused i do believe, but hey, if they can get up and sing terrible things like 'if u're happy and u know it clap ur hands', and then 'my heart will go on' (when they dont even know the words!), plus inform everyone that 'gay' actually means happy and therefore its ok to say things like 'hi! i'm feeling really gay today!' (oh dear, i lost count how many of the 1st yr students started practising this for real!), then i can make them do the hokey-pokey the same as my 4 year old kinder kids!

lucky for me perhaps shortly after the hokey-pokey leo appeared and whisked me away to saftey, seeing as his late night class had finished and eventually we ended up in the caf. ) and i do believe that is the longest continuous bracket i have ever written. it starts several paragraphs back if you'll notice, and yes there are numerous brackets within brackets along the way. who cares.

anyway. the caf is actually in the library and its really cute and cosy. i loved it. unfortunately i only got to go there 2 or 3 times, cos it had a habit of randomly being closed every time i went to the new campus. i personally think it was a campaign against me. much like the fact that i apparently wasnt allowed in the library on my own campus!! something crazy. evil woman at the desk glaring at me and saying the foreign students arent allowed in, despite having student cards, and then gazing suspiciously at leo and demanding to know if he's foreign too. weird. evil woman.

where is this going do you ask? didnt it start off about a drama or something? it did. now be patient! we're getting there! so anyway in this very cool caf (on whose topic i could keep getting side-tracked, if i introduced you to mention of Frank and his suave hunt for a lady. apparently he's still going to france...as far as i know he's been in the process of going there for at least a year now! ok now we are side-tracked. enough!) so in this very cool caf im sitting with leo having hot chocolate or something and trying to talk obviously, cos other than gaze lovingly into ones boyfriend's eyes often you do actually have a conversation with them.

however said boyfriend was constantly more enthralled by the exciting dramatic scenes of a tv show showing on a big projector size screen at the back of the caf, than listening to his boring foreign girlfriend drabble on. i admit at times of particularly exciting sounding music i too would turn my head and stare at the fight scene of 'im too cool for school' characters looking oh so bad-ass, but overall the dialogue went over my head and i'd lose interest and hence start my conversation attempt again.

only problem was leo could understand it perfectly well, hence it was still interesting for him. knowing me i probably cracked it and told him to look at me instead of the stupid screen and stupid drama, which i think he obediently did, until the next spectacularly exciting music scene arose again.

the memory stayed with me quite clearly, although i'd never heard of the drama before and it looks a bit silly and well, dramatic, so i supposed it to be an old one. but i just discover i was wrong! it was a 2006 one, and it was airing it's first run throughs on nights such as that one in the cafe, where i selfishly wanted to be the center of attention.

i believe its a very odd twist of irony that this is the drama series which i discovered (or at least the end half of the series) on my dvd, most unexpectedly. and it is this very drama which i am now admitting to being addicted to and close to becoming obsessed with. i've even gone so far and to fall in love with it's crappy happy sickening little jingle of a theme song, which i unfortunately discovered i have the cd of! (it must sound odd how i mistakenly end up having ought all these things! i put it down to the fact that at times its hard to know what you're actually getting yourself into in china!)



so yes, the name of my new beloved drama series is 'WeiXiao Pasta' or 'smile pasta'. yes, gay at times, yes, cheesy, yes full of wannabe bad-asses, of stupid/ demented family members, of sweet heroines and of handsome pop stars etc. but oh so good! it has the right amount of twists at the most frustrating of times, which do of course make you express your frustration at the characters out-loud. but one of the greatest things i discovered. i reckon most of it i can understand! as in dialogue wise! and this is entering the viewing mid-way through the season so i dont even have the background/ context from the beginning. it' so great.

...im just wondering how do i tell leo that i've now become addicted to a show i didnt want him to enjoy... ???

perhaps i'll hope he doesnt remember it all that night so clearly ^_^

cuteness! yay.

i planned today to be a very productive day, where i finished off all my schoolwork and felt a great sense of achievement. however...that all ended when i slept in 'til 12:30pm then sat on the internet (talking to leo, yay! and looking at boring websites, not so yay!) until now which is 4:00. im yet to have my shower, so my hair is disgusting and i feel yukk, and im also yet to have my lunch, which i shall commence cooking and then go have my shower i've just decided.

before that, i will mention the point of this post. i've decided my topic (roughly) for the international uni chinese speaking competition. it has to be on Beijing welcoming the Olympics, so i will do the 2008 mascots!!

yayness - they're so cute!

so now i leave you to enjoy some pics of them, starting with this very cool one from a department store in Beijing's Wang Fu Jing shopping district.

'Business' as in busy-ness.

had a very busy day today, and it's getting a little late (with uni classes tomorrow *sigh* a girl's work is never done... and dont ask why uni classes are a girl's work specifically. i dont give that much thought to my blogging sentences!) so i will just write a quick short note and then choof (rhymes with woof, and coincidently is also the sound trains make, i do believe) off to bed.

im quite content with the above paragraph, however i feel i should actually add a little more detail to the day. i spent the first half of it avoiding and putting off starting my calligraphy essay, under the guise of doing preparation work and final research. finally i picked the topic for good (changed from a biography which was difficult to get off the ground to a critique of a lovely graceful and slender, lithe, bony piece of work from the Tang Dynasty approx (650AD).

i further avoided starting the work by eating lunch and then calling leo for about 2 and a half hours. a very very worthwhile use of my time!

but finally the guilt and worry got to me (not sure why, i still have a few weeks until the due date, however i will have to puzzle out footnotes and referencing and appendice-ing before then) and i got started on it.

And surprisingly critiquing turns out to be awesomely simple! it's great i just get to crap on about arty principles like line, form, rhythm, movement etc. and i can just say that the characters are tall and slender and graceful and powerful and sensitive and clever and spritely and refined and elegant and balanced and skeletal and ethereal in a whole lot of different ways!

im loving it. (so need Leehom's maccas 'i'm lovin' it song playing! lol) i even managed to use the often overlooked word 'spurt' somewhere in the essay. i do believe i was likening a specific character to an archers bow, strong and supple, ready to release a spurt of energy. something along those lines anyway.

so now that you're all curious about what this amazing piece of calligraphy work looks like (btw i have a very nice book showcasing much of the piece, which i bought in china) i shall leave u to gaze in wonder of its impressive aura.

behold a very small portion of Chu Sui Liang's (596-658AD), 'Preface to the Sacred Scriptures' or Yan Ta Sheng Jiao Xu.

Friday, not the 13th.


as cathy pointed out very early last Saturday morning, the day before we'd had a friday the 13th! luckily nothing bad happened for me! but damn, it would have made a great night to listen to Stevie Wonder 'Superstition'. too late now. haha, i wonder how often friday the 13ths come around? I'll bet someone out there's done a study on it! if anyone else is curious about it feel free to research and let me know... ooh vicki you could message michael and ask him, haha!

but alas (or not alas?) this week today is not friday the 13th. it's friday the 20th, and it's very nearly Saturday the 21st. which reminds me i have some library books due back on wednesday..which is also anzac day...should make some cookies...

and now we are thoroughly off track, so let's stay off track by changing the topic. today started off with me waking early, at about 10am. i think mum and cameron were being loud hence my i was awoken from my attempted sleep in.

despite initial procrastination, and the temptations of watching dvds and other wonderful distractions, i decided to try and relieve the constant ebbing of stress at the back of my mind by tackling some of my assignments. their due dates are still several weeks away but i have a constant uneasy feeling about them. i want to get them out of the way.

my main problem has been this. for my japanese one we haven't really learnt enough grammar structures to be able to create relevant sentences for my 200words on the history of the kimono (a topic i perhaps stupidly chose myself). im not alone in this, a few of my classmates have asked me how on earth we're meant to write when we dont know how to make sentences. ...pfft! just a slight setback!

but around lunchtime i sat down and finally poured my concentration into it, and i think i slowly got somewhere. i think im now a 3rd of the way through, and feel like i've got the hang of it. i've compiled likely sentence word orders by combining grammar rules from chinese and what we've learnt so far in japanese. sounds risky i know, but i think it should work. i'll try and finish the rest before next thursday and get my teacher to check it. yay. feeling more at ease already!

i ran out of time to work on the second assignment today, which is my calligraphy essay. and the problem with that ne is that i just haven't definitely picked my topic. im tossing up between 2 related topics, but i possibly cant find all the relevant information i should have, so i probably should change topics. we'll see.

however calligraphy wise i did get some practical work done. i'd completely forgotten during my week long holiday that i was supposed to do some calligraphy work to hand in, so i was a good girl today and did 2 sheets, so i can hand them in on tuesday.
yay. productiveness puts me in a good mood!

in the afternoon, following leo's suggestion i made a cake...or rather lots of cakes. mini ones - yay! mini and cute is always more fun.
in a few minutes im planning to try and do a bit more on my japanese assignment writing, get more of it out of the way. i thought of going to bed at 9pm, which probably would have been wise 'cause i could get into a good routine (oh well, i shall try it for the next 2 nights) but then i thought 'no, i'll do some more of the jap'. possibly is the right decision after all. but it'll be even righter (is that a word??) if i actually stop blogging and do it. so farewell, i leave you to gaze in envy, (or jealousy perhaps) at my mini cakes. mwahaha!

P.S. they taste pretty good with ice-cream.

Phillip Island girls.


Following my day-trip to the zoo, Vicki Cathy and myself jumped in Cathy's car and headed down to the beach. back to Phillip Island again. ^_^ but this time it was a house just of girls!

we spent a severe amount of each day simply chatting, preparing and eating meals, listening to cathy's ipod music, sitting or braving the water at the beach, or in vicki and my case camera-whoring with self shots!

Aren't we cute?

i wont subject you to the whole collection, so you'll just have to trust me there are some both glamourous and hideous pictures among them! however mum should be happy that her latest decorating addition to the walls of our beach house have featured in this next one.

it's from Italy, (hence the disbelief vicki is trying to convey), from their holiday there, when i was coming home from china.

basically it was a nice fun trip away from the city, slightly woman's weekly themed at times it seemed, (we seemed to be like a group of wives preparing the salads at a bbq, haha), complete of course with cathy's culinary expertise!!

may i present cathy, a la chef!


she made a big tiramisu and a mini one, the coffee flavour wasn't too overpowering so i especially liked it!


mmmm. quiche - i love it!! so so good!!!


dessert time! we get to eat the tiramisu at last!!


we, or perhaps i, decided that it was well and truly time for my roots to be re-done. seeing as it's April, the 4th month of the year now...and i probably died it last in november or early december im guessing... that's about 5 months. my god. no wonder i had like 5-6cm of re-growth!

so...... hair dying time.

i generally find that hairdresser's nearly always have relatively cool hairstyles themselves and cathy is no exception. doing a very careful job as you can see.


waiting for it all to take effect.

and then EXCITEMENT! the final result!

not only do i no longer have dark roots but i appear to have a glowing halo surrounding my part line, or part circle. always knew i was an angel!

ooh! and cathy and vicki got subjected to their very first korean movie! 'windstruck'. i like it, it's cute, and makes u appreciate cool little paper windmills and the story behind the pinky promise.

sounds random i know, but it's a sweet film. coincidently it was the first korean film i watched too, on the japanese airline flight heading to Shenyang. only difference was i only had korean, no english subtitles. but it was fun nevertheless!

alas. it's back to uni now. i had a speaking test for japanese on monday, which went fairly well i think. it wasn't too nerve racking. i think already having a lot of experience with a second language helps heaps. and then i got back some different schoolwork marks today - overall they're not bad.

ooh! and kate! you'll be interested to know that the odd 'chinese bridge' chinese public speaking contest just got more bizarre! haha. our teacher told us today that we have to do a performance at the end of our speech!! crazy chinese will give people any excuse to slip some karaoke into life. but at the end of a public speech?? haha. preliminaries are at the end of May apparently. me and a few classmates might just end up entering the contest. should be an experience in any case! lol