warmer weather and lost opportunities.


while im on a roll of finishing off late blogposts which i've thought about several times but managed to put off each time an opportunity arose, perhaps i have decided that i shall do them now. or at least, make a good dent in one of them. (yes, you guessed it right, am i currently meant to be working on an assignment...well two in fact, but one has a sooner deadline than the other, however i believe the state i last left it in about 2 weeks ago was a moderately-close-to-finished sort of state).

another note...i just realised something intriguing via typo which i doubt was actually planned, but then again blogger may surprise me. blogspot is simply blogpost with letters rearranged. *gasp!!!*

moving on. as i sit here in my purple tshirt styled tshirt (dont ask me when a tshirt is not a tshirt cos the explanation shall get a little confusing) u know the slightly less, oh im not going to get into this. ok so i am sitting in my purple tshirt with happy bananna lolly yellow coloured writing across it that just says 'french' with mini love heart 'i' dots, over the non existant letter 'i's in the word french floating at random intervals over the word. confused yet? haha. im not going to help u out cos i cant be bothered taking a photo of said tshirt while im wearing it, and hence u shall just have to imagine.

sitting here as i've quoted maybe 3 times already, in my purple tshirty tshirt (sidenote: did anyone used to watch Teabag?? with the boy called tshirt in it haha. that was a cool show though i seriously dont remember any of it!) now back to my tshirt which really isnt of any significance to anything. what i started off trying to express is the fact that the weather has gotten sufficiently warmer... and hence i have no doubt missed any small opportunity i ever started out with in australia to wear...

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dum

dum

daaaaaaa


my Hello Kitty earmuffs! hahaha


but seriously, how cute are they! i had thought that melbourne's winter was actually a lot colder than it's turned out to be, so originally i thought i could easily get away with wearing them on the street - but really the need never came up!

i put it down to the ability to be able compare the feeling of here where u know you're 'frozen' by the cold feeling slowly seeping into your bones and making u shiver uncontrollably, with the other 'face going numb and hands hurting from sheer cold, and how wonderfully warm it feels simply to be wearing a pretty cotton mask across your nose mouth and cheeks, at the same time fretting about what affect your breath's rising condensation escaping from the top of the mask will have on your non-waterproof mascara as your eyelashes are coated with tiny droplets from the steam. poetic? yes. annoying? yes, also.

did i mention feet are numb? even more difficult to navigate uneven chinese footpaths in high heeled boots when u cant feel anything from your ankles down. buying anything in a market becomes an absolute nuisance because the thought of taking off a glove to try and fish out some coins is almost too much to bear. as much as u think the gloves are crap and do not keep u warm at all anyway, there is SUCH a difference between having something, and nothing on. enough whinging. truth be told i enjoy almost every minute of that kind of winter. go July babies! and snow and iceskating are extra bonuses to it all ^_^


and so the rest of this post will be devoted to my collection of Hello Kittyness acquired in China over the last year. haha


somehow upon returning to melbourne i discovered somewhere along the line that i no longer had any pink handbags! which was really bizarre seeing as about 8 out of 10 new items in my wardrobe would all be pink! hence i took to stealing mum's pale pink handbag, instead of buying my own and lamenting the loss of my 2-3 hello kitty bags which i did have at some points during the year... think 2 eventually broke, from my having used as book carrying bags (a big mistake for any bag u love dearly!! ) alas, their soft pale pink leather just couldnt take it. i know i almost bought the same design bag again at one market, but i didnt want to pay as much as i'd originally payed (i was incredibly stingy in my bargaining at that time of year) and hence never battled enough to buy it. i believe i shall bring back an abundance of pink or hello kitty handbags this time though.

this is a quite similar bag to one of the ones i had, so u can just imagine. ^_^


the first of my hello kitty wardrobe! this was intended for wearing as pjs i think, cos it was on the rack of a underwear shop in Tai Yuan Jie, which is a really cool underground shopping plaza near the center of the city (really really close to where louise now lives!). as with all singlet tops sold in china as underwear or sleepwear, i wear them as i would any singlet top. as normal clothes.



next up a wallet that would have cost between 5-10 yuan (divide by 5 or 6 for aussie $) cos i bought it at a kind of 2 yuan style accessories stall at Bei Hang market (just down the road from the uni. i would hike there in my heels at least 2 times every day in the last few months of the trip! i believe i was unhealthily addicted to shopping, even window shopping by that stage)


and then came the dilemma of trying to find trackkie pants in china where they seemed to not exist! eventually found some at Tai Yuan Jie (the underground shopping plaza) which where black and fluero green or fleuro orange and hence not so attractive, but they where hello kitty and the only thing i'd seen even slightly trackkie pants-ish so i was considering them. then louise, smart little girl that she is, told me to ask if they had any different colours...and lo and behold ta daaa! black and hot pink! yay. cute.


haha. i have a story about these pants too. i remember very clearly one afternoon in the nice warm weather at the end of summer when i was happily running out of the dorm building just as one of the older but friendly russian guys was going in. ivan. and he called out some sort of greeting 'hello kitty' in an almost wolf-whistle manner and i was just like 'hey, he has pretty good eyesight... the hello kitty logo is fairly small and we passed eachother pretty quickly!'

and then slowly it dawned on me like a splash of cold water. oh. he was staring at my arse.
first thought was felt very stupid haha. second thought was eew. ivan was meant to be more like a helpful big brother figure! but he turned out to be a little bit odd and a pervert on other occasions anyway. he took great delight in commenting several times on how windy a particular afternoon was as i was leaving the dorm courtyard to go for a date with leo. i was having great fun rather unsuccessfully trying to hold down my dress' skirt down, similar to the battles of our old eltham college dresses actually. but then again, apart from the embarrassment factor, perhaps it was ok, because it made me more aware of the situation for the trip to the restaurant where i had to walk past a construction site full of workers. i think perhaps it was more fortunate that it was ivan, rather than the workers. and then there's the time he was trying to crack onto me in my final 3 days of life in shenyang and i was like 'um..excuse me! my bf just went home yesterday!!' and his reply was something stupid and cocky like 'i know haha, that's why im trying now'. grrrr. silly ivan.



on a similar topic to the above stories i shall merely mention that they have lots of cute hello kitty undies at Bei Hang, and so u can imagine the cuteness.


an unexpectedly awesome and good taste birthday present from Miracle!


that boy just keeps going up in my good books. i think he even picked it himself, from what jess said, im not sure if she was even there when he got it. so yes, i was and am impressed!


and of course, the most wonderful of all hello kitty items.... hello kitty herself!! with love from leo *hearts*


yay, it was my early chrissy present! cos he found out form his exam timetable that he was going to have an exam on christmas day (which was a monday i think, cos i taught at the kinder that day) and so when he came to see me the night that he found out he brought me a hello kitty as an early present to make up for his possible christmas absence. but in the end we got together and had a roast chicken and potato salad christmas dinner anyway. haha. it was nice.


and another surprise present he brought to me at a later date after he had confirmed that i was quite quite quite fond of hello ktity things was this cute little stained glass keyring. i havent actually got anything really suitable to put it on yet, so i just enjoy it as a keyring haha.




hmmm. that seems to be the end of my hello kitty merchandise... odd, i could have sworn there was more, but i cant seem to find it, so i guess we shall end the post. it's probably enough anyway. and yes. i need to finally get down to my paper!
due dates are looming!!!!!!

a night out with lou. and ktv.


saturday night brendan, cathy, renee, vicki, lou, kyla, linda and i met up in the city for a night out... singing ktv, or karaoke, for the less familiar.


it was an awesomely fun night, made more so by everyone's enthusiasm, the unforgetable 80s and 90s songs, the korean music, the chinese hits, and of course, my favourite... the tambourines!!!



is this not the face of a boy who's incredibly happy with his tambourine i ask you??


and likewise these girls??


hah, there, see, i knew it!


cathy recovering from an afternoon of festivities with her family still managed to wow us with her talent.



lou and i managed to make people groan with our continual attempts to subject them to chinese pop music!

haha, we're both as pale as each other! i never realised how oddly alike and un-alike lou and i can be. we are both very white, with similar coloured eyes and lips and light reflects a off our cheeks and noses haha. yet she is very petite and i am very big, and our hair colours are now opposite ends of the spectrum. strange.

on the topic of eyecolours. here's a nice closeup of two of my favourite sets of eyes. renee and cathy's.
renee's are very cool. blue some days, almost pale yellow and matching her hair colour in sunlight on others. cathy having very pretty green eyes, also the first for me to ever see. yes, until meeting cathy i believed that all those characters in novels descibed as possessing green eyes were purely fictional. i thought that green eyes, like purple eyes was simply a popular, yet made up thing of authors. haha.

some more close up photos while we're at it (and before i give the computer to my brother, who unfortunately has discovered an assignment is suddenly due tomorrow).



some carefully posed photo looking photos



an action shot, proving that yes he did sing, (and not bad either).


and just some generally happiness to show everyone just how much fun they missed out if they didnt come, haha

yes, that means you!! haha

Motorola Melbourne Spring Fashion Show


wednesday 5th september in true heidi fashion i was running late getting ready as loren came to pick me up on her way to the Motorola Spring Fashion Festival, most likely due to too many hours sitting on the computer (oh, how very unlike me!).



we got away without too many dramas, and made alright time getting to the city. we'd been told to 'dress well' on the invitations so i took the opportunity to wear some new heels which i got the day before at an unexpected trip to bridge rd, during what should have been my busiest day of classes. only $10...can u believe it.

and they're lace up straps. so so cool. my dream shoes haha.

also got these cool looking winter-y shoes too. down from $180...to $10. 'twas my lucky day! ;-) im yet to wear them out somewhere. i think they'll probably need some walking in before i do that. i dont fancy sore feet.



anyway back to the fashion show. i discovered im not used to stiletto heels, and tall ones at that. walking down hills in any high heel is always a bit of a challenge, but, haha i felt quite ridiculous tottering along at a snail pace very precariously down the hills of the city in these silly little things. but im still in love with them. i believe im fairly used to them now too. but i still dont wanna go tackling too many downhills in the near future haha. things could go horridly wrong! i count myself lucky that i survived the fashion show night with them. haha

so yes. we arrived at the Melbourne Town Hall which is one of those buildings which i've always seen, but doubt i've ever been in, and generally seem to ignore the fact that it actually exists. have to say though the inside is not too shabby.



luckily vicki had bought some more credit for her phone during the day, so she was able to tell us she was going to be late. an evil and unsuccessful trip to the doctors for her recently broken finger was unfortunately the cause. never the less she got there in the end, in a mighty good effort, only 15mins late!


we grabbed our tickets and headed on in, only to perplex the ushers with the fact that we were supposed to be in the VIP seating but (due to not wanting to disturb the other VIPs ?) had to send us up to the balcony seating as the show had already started. we didnt really care at first, as long as u can see the show, and still get a little showbag of goodies. and actually i think it was probably a blessing that we were on the balcony cos it gave us the freedom to talk during the show, which would've driven the VIPs crazy, as we would've done it anyway im sure, despite their very sombre and stern appearance. they weren't even taking any photos. pfft! silly people.


some of the outfits were quite cool, and some were quite odd, as any good catwalk show has! my favourite was the girl who had a big bag slung around her neck or shoulder containing leafy bouquets that looked suspiciously like potplants. she proceeded to accidentally drop one of the leafy bunches, and so the next model had to pick it up on his exit. haha.

alas i dont have many photos of the evening, cos i actually spent all my time taking videos of the show. figured it was better than photos which would be blurry and bad lighting.


after the show i spotted my friend kyla and two of her friends as we were all leaving the Town hall, so we got together outside and chatted for a bit.

some guy gave us all long stem roses which was nice. and of course we took some photos to show off our nice outfits.


this red dress of kyla's is also from bridge rd. its reassuring that occasionally good stuff can be found there. sometimes it can be quite a challenge.


the night wove on and we decided we'd better be getting home. i had to do some last minute study for my japanese composition piece test which was unfortunately at 9am the following morning. thankfully it went well, i finished early and hence left early. yay for memorising entire short writing pieces before u go in! ;-)

we said byebye to kyla, and then to vicki with her poor broken finger, and then loren dropped me home again. once home i promptly set to discovering what sorts of goodies had been in the showbag and it actually wasnt too bad.



got a few samples of shampoos and eyecreams and things. and a wonderfully over large bottle of flower essence water designed especially 'for women' haha. simple water (for a moment ignoring the flower essences) designed with women in mind - whatever will they think of next??

fathers' day


fathers' day weekend saw a lot of procrastinating, followed by many readings for my recent chinese history subject 'china since mao' and preparation for my class presentation for said subject for that week. lucky for me, the week's topics were quite interesting! i got to do a classpaper on 'women's magazine in the 90s'.

it was quite cool to read about all the 30 virtuous traits of the 'ideal chinese office lady', (a very extensive and impossible list i assure u!), including: 'intelligent, sharp-witted, well-informed, knowledgeable, well-spoken, having good taste, independent, self-respecting, conscious of women’s equality, principled, gentle, has a good sense of humor, easy to get along with, understanding, generous, sensitive, not suspicious, straight-forward, efficient and self-controlled among them. Her life should be well-balanced and love should never be her only concern.'

and then there was all the awesome advice for the office lady in regards to relations with her boss and male co-workers, the way in which warm understanding eyes should be employed (which are not flirtatious mind you!), and my other personal favourites: 1st) the office girl voice: describing how a breathy voice may give men a romantic fantasy, however this is probably more desirable than the 'loud and unfriendly tone' which 'will put the him in a bad mood all day'. haha. remember: this is in an office setting. hahaha

and 2nd) office talk: where it quite simply said, 'dont talk too much. it will annoy people'. i laughed and laughed and laughed. what fantastic advice from a womens magazine. i love it. other topics for the week were about extramarital affairs in shanghai, which have made me slightly paranoid about my future (haha), but was quite interesting to learn about all the same. very interesting to learn that in the past marriages in china were simply 'duties' for making a family, and that 'love and romance' was sought through extramarital affairs instead.


anyways, sunday was of course fathers day, and in the late afternoon/ evening my grandparents came over for dinner where mum cooked a form of crumbed chicken that looked suspiciously like what brendan had bought the weird chicken crumbing powder for at the asian supermarket. very odd!



i of course was instructed to make a pavlova for the occasion as both pa, dad and myself enjoy them immensely, and as 2 out of the 3 of us are fathers it seems appropriate for a fathers day occasion.


mum interfered at the end with my pavlova cooking and hence the middle sank.
but we filled it up with cream so no one could tell. strawberries and cream are oh so very yumm regardless.