me again.


meant to be studying. hah. as we all know, what a joke that is! it's 5pm already. aiya. how annoying.

cam and his gf and maybe some other friends have headed off to NZ. they were rather late getting to the airport but they havent come back so im assuming everything went ok. i shall next see them in february i believe.

mmm. yesterday was a let-down. i'd been counting on getting my hair chemically straightened, permanently. oh what i dream it would be, to not have to shower, blow dry and then straighten my hair with a flat iron every god-damn morning, on top of putting on my makeup and general getting ready to do anything. and not having to worry about rain, or humidity, yes, that evil h-word!!! and especially so for travelling, the aeroplanes, the stopovers in foreign countries where i dont have electrical socket adapters for... but oh it was not to be. :(

apparently bleaching (i.e. dying hair blonde) and hair straightening cannot go together. otherwise i too should be joining leila and cathy's trend of shaving my head it seems. it's quite annoying. + the hairhouse warehouse staff where kind of rude about it. annoying people!
linda thought maybe i could try anyway, but i dont know...the risk seems a little too great. cos i know my hair is very fine, much more so than asian hair, and rather dead. then again, apparently if u over peroxide, on already bleached hair it's also meant to break. but that hasnt happened yet. then again maybe the bleached parts dont get bleached twice...im not really sure seeing as im not the one applying the stuff into my hair.

but linda straightened vicki's hair earlier in the year, and she bleaches or at least dyes it. linda also straightened her own hair about a week after she permed it, and then dyed it black the following week (not bleaching i guess, but still dying). but she used korean straightening products then for all the procedures. alas her magical store of korean straightening chemicals is all gone. :(

im assuming that the korean straightening is the same or at least related to what i've discovered is called 'japanese straightening', or sometimes 'rebonding'. meant to change the ions or something in the structure of the hair and re-make it, hence how curly hair can become straight. the japanese mainly use it for smoothing, adding shine and silkiness to their hair which is apparently quite course. everyone else int he world however does it for its straigthening properties. the unusual thing about the japanese process however is that it (if its the prope procedure, and not just a normal straightening lotion) it's meant to seemingly restore and improve the quality of ur hair, instead of killing it like every other chemical. and hence it is supposedly ok for bleached hair. though who knows.

in countries like australia the procedure whether its legit or not costs b/w $100 -$600. in asia countries it's considerably cheaper depending on where and the salon, eg. japan could be say $80, bangkok $10, singapore $50 or something similar.

after a considerable time of searching i have found the chinese translation for rebonding, so i believe i shall investigate it and chat with various hair salons in china and find out if their procedure will kill my hair or rebuild it as it's supposed to. they will of course try and convince me to cut the top layer of my hair into a mullet, while keeping long (sometimes rat-tails) underneath and crimp perm the top half so it looks like i've been electrocuted by a toaster- unless they've come up with a new equally ridiculous hair craze since last year- but i shall politely and determinedly decline.

i intend to make them test a small portion of my hair before doing any procedure, cos basically after some of my dying/ hair cutting experiences i know they have absolutely no idea how to deal with western especially fine hair. so it shall be an adventure no doubt, and hopefully not too much of a mis-adventure. luckily for me if i end up with no hair it'll be winter so i can just wear a pretty knitted beanie. moving on.


at least i kind of achieved something today. i went to the bank and finally set up internet banking which could prove handy when overseas. the silly girl who opened it for me though. god she could chatter away about nothing whatsoever! in between persuading me to do this and that with my account and open this other one and la-di-da-di-da she managed to keep me occupied for nearly 40mins talking about her housemates stealing her dog while she's at work, and her ex-bf from taiwan and her family in malasia and her sagas with melb public transport and the types of asian drama shows she likes to watch. now while im vaguely interested in some of these topics, ultimately if im in a bank trying to do a simple process and you're a total stranger, and i'd like to get on with the rest of my life, including packing for overseas and supposedly studying for exams, then i dont really care! my un-enthusiatic nods and murmurs did not seem to deter her though. she was quite the random motormouth. friendly of course but just....incessant. so yes, she wasted a fair amount of my precious time, and now ive wasted even more by talking about her and in the meantime i've forgotten what else i had to say in my post so i guess i shall be off.


ohh, actually. haha. half the reason i started this post was 'cause i was thinking of all the cool things i would be able to do again in another week or so (imaging that i wasn't going to be poor and crippled from paying rent, and trying to save up any money i happen to be lucky to earn, but we shall forget that for the time being), like manicures!



creepy as it sounds i'd love to bring some of these girls to australia. they could earn so much more for their businesses if only they could run them here! it's so cheap in china, or maybe rather so crazily expensive here.


but i reckon these girls have got some definite skills to their art. some of the designs u can choose them to paint on your nails (or the fake nails if your nails are crap) are really intricate and amazing. and some are fairly simply too, but mighty effective. ahh, the choices are great and then u can pick and match whatever colours, and add some diamantes or bubbles or whatever u wanna pay for.

some of the designs are so cute! like the 2008 olympic mascots! i hope i can find a girl who can do these!

and they dont use any stencils or special tools to paint either. they simply use the normal nail polish brush! or depending if they need to blend something maybe they use a sewing pin too. it's really very cool to watch them work.



i often got flowery designs last year, similar to the above and below photos. usually in pinks and whites and blacks.


and how pretty are these! i really like this design, i believe i shall try it. it's pretty simple but looks hot!




these black and white ones are quite sweet too. actually the top design works really well usually, all the random lines crossing over, i think i tried it once in some contrasting prupley colours, but i do quite like the black and white, and the crisscross pattern and bows on the bottom design are super cute! would look good with a black and white tweed mini skirt and long socks. haha.


i must take some photos of the underground plaza next time i am there. it's kind of like an underground greensy, but much cooler, with sections devoted to beauty, nails, hair, and tattoos; or sticker photos; bags, shoes, clothes, softtoys whatever. i love it!


ooh, this is a cool design. not very beautiful. but definitely cool!


haha, perhaps i should get all my nails done with the chinese flag before i go to get my visa re-newed haha... might just help to speed the process up, lol!

an update.


wow. it seems like it's been a log time since i blogged... but hmmmm, what has actually happened since then??

well, i finished classes, i know that much, and i got together with the korean girls and we made a funny poster for cathy saying 'we love cathy', and then embarrassed her by waving it at her recital which was an amazing event and if u didnt come (with the exception of anyone who was physically in an exam at that time) then u're an idiot.

i actually cant really think what else i've been up to. i enrolled to do a postal vote seeing as if all goes well and i dont happen to miss any flights along the way then i will be arriving in china on the day of everyones voting, so u can think of me as u're filling out ur ballot papers. haha

i have been battling the stupid uni's computer system several times and changed my subject choices even more times! just when i think its ok i notice something else wrong, or that some of my changes haven't gone thru. ah well, we will get there.

my internet has been screwed for a while too. too much downloading leads to being capped every month which means our net speed is reduced to nothing and no pages or anything will load. it's just been reset so everything should be a-ok now...but yet the damn net keeps dropping out. problems will never cease!



i made a white-chocolate mud cake just recently too. well i made two. and then stuck them together with some i dont know... some french word but ive forgotten it haha, basically i sort of a cream fudge that goes between the two..


the cake itself's alright, but unfortunately that cream in the middle tastes just like sweetened condensed milk...which is ok, but just yeh, too sweet.

never the less, i am hoeing into the cake regardless.



it's hot this evening...dont know why - it wasnt that hot today. warm, yes, but i keep a 3/4 length cardigan on for most of the day so.....


had the first exam today..linguistics. .studying for it was not very stressing and in fact the study itself was fairly minimal. not that surprisingly, it is lazy fairly easy going me of course. the exam is not really all that worth mentioning, it was meh, examish and boring. although one passage we had to analyse was from the harry potter book. it reminded me that i havent actually read it yet. ooops. actually i saw something about harry potter the other day actually. something about a day to commemorate his death or something and it made me think 'ohh, does he die in the last book then?' i kind of hope not because then it was a spoiler, and it was in a newspaper or sth. they should be more responsible. though i suppose they assume everyone has already read it by now. i guess eventually i will have to read it and find out then.

as i left the exam the day got increasingly annoying. i noticed i had some missed calls and a voicemail message on my almost-creditless phone, so i used up the last of my credit to listen to the voicemail message and it was someone from an office in the uni babbling about something to do with my enrolment and how i had to 'urgently' call them back. i hurried along to kyla's house (conveniently very close to the exhibition building' to borrow her phone and called the woman back on the number she gave...only about half an hour after she originally clled but she didnt answer and then it got put through to an annoying answering machine. so i left my name, purpose and number and waited for her call but alas she never called me back. finally i got so worried about this stupid 'urgent' thing and fearing the worst (though i couldn't define 'the worst') i headed up to the uni in person.

i couldnt work out why it was the asia institute calling me though, cos they said it was about enrolment and any admin/ enrollment stuff should be done by the arts facuty. but yes, nevertheless i was worried. u see my secret fear is that the uni will somehow work out a reason to terminate my enrolment usually through some connection with my deferring to travel and ending up studying at another 'tertiary' institution, even though what i studied was not a tertiary course and i am not the first who has done it. haha, the likelihood of being 'discovered' in doing this is kind of heightened by the fact tat i am in the process of claiming credit for said study. hahahaha. but yes, seriously i doubt they really care, either way. but yeh, when the uni calls me about my enrolment instead of just sending an email it does kind of get u a little bit worried.

so as luck would have it the office had closed just 10 mins before, and i loitered around and then consulted the directory and worked out the woman who'd called me and went directly to her office. she wasnt in alas. already gone home it would seem. slackers! so then i went to a library, stole a catalogue computer and checked my email. sure enough the woman had sent me an email and this silly 'ugent' matter was about as urgent as a queue for a soft-drink vending machine when you're busting to go to the toilet.

haha! i quite like that visual actually! must remember that for another time in the future! ^-^ so yes, my point being it really wasnt as urgent as it all seemed. seems they wanted to switch a subject i enrolled in for 2nd semester into a 1st semester subject and seeing as i was enrolled in that they had to notify me and offer me an alternative. they gave me 2 choices, one being to drop a subject already in my selection for 1st semester so i could continue doing that, or the 2nd option was they'd let me study a different chinese subject, which u needed the one i was enrolled in as a pre-req, and then i could do the pre-req in 1st semester in 2009 if i still wanted to. i've heard from several sources that the one i was enrolled in was actually quite dry and boring (i.e. reading economic documents in chinese). so naturally i've picked option 2 and probably intend to bypass that boring subject completely and just do the more advanced one which i wanted to do all along. so it seems the university has made things easier for me this time without even realising it. thanks! ^-^

so yes, its a relief to know my degree isnt being terminated yet, however undoubtedly there will be many a nightmare to crop up in it thanks to the melb model which im sure everyone hates for some reason or another.

and now seeing as i cant really think of anything else i need to comment on i shall move onto my last little story which is about last night. i went with some of the korean girls to see kyla in a small fashion show that was being held at this bar opposite rmit uni. i have a feeling it was sth. to do with the uni but im not too sure.



im really not supposed to show any photos for kyla's sake (as she wants to erase the terrible makeup from her memory forever), however i just know that louise especially will appreciate these pvc pants, so i had to put it up!! bring back memories, haha ? hmmm, i seemed to take all my photos at the wrong moment, always as someone turned around or was trying to walk down the stairs, like in this one.

anyways during the show i got a huge shock when i realised that one of the male models strutting his stuff down the catwalk was chris munroe. haha! i was like 'hey i know him!! that is so weird!!'


he did an alright job. i had a brief chat to him after and it was funny cos he was saying how he deliberately hadnt told anyone about the show (incl. his parents) cos he didnt want anyone to see! mwahaha, i saw, and i took photos (and maybe some movie clips?) too. mwahaha. i dont really know if he's done modelling stuff before but he said that he knew one of the people who did some of the designing so they'd asked him to be in it.


luckily for him though the guys didnt seem to have that much makeup or any that i can recall, then again maybe they did and i just wasnt taking notice...we were of course spending most of the night waiting to see kyla come out. but my god! the makeup artist for the girls needed to be shot and buried! kyla is correct when she named the show the zombie show, cos thats what they were zombies. it was horrible! they removed their eyebrows! did something with glue and painted over them in white so that u seriously couldnt see their eyebrows. and u have no idea what having no eyebrows actually does to one's face, particularly forehead! lets just say proportions look bizarre!

i've always readily admitted that i dont like eyebrows, and that i like to keep my fringe long enough to obscure mine completely. inf act i have clear memories of my dad warning and lecturing me many times when i was young they i should never try to shave off my eyebrows (he seemed to fear me doing that, i guess, so he must have been aware of my anti-eyebrow views haha) cos apparently my auntie did just that once. and im informed they grew back in patches and were not quite normal for quite some time. haha. poor girl!

but anyway, after seeing some eyebrowless zombies on the catwalk last night wearing some rather boring for the most-part outfits i have decided that perhaps eyebrows are not so bad afterall, and yes, evidently they have a purpose in being on our foreheads. the 1st thing kyla did after the show was rush out to see us and then tell us to wait while she went to wash her makeup off and find her eyebrows again. haha

we'll see how the movie turned out.. though the rate im going our internet will get capped again this month...must limit downloading/ uploading!

not bad, but yes, very much a zombie show!


not nearly as glamorous as her pre-cup day show. observe.

much nicer!



despite it still being light out it was already 8pm.


i needed to take the bus home so we said goodbye and i hurried home, just in time to say a quick hi to Andy who'd just come home from the US and korea where they did a band tour. didnt actually get to speak to him about anything but i saw him so i guess it counts.


and off to bed i went, ready for my exam...and not stressed about anything at all. alas sleep still did not come easily. 2 hours later when leo sent me a message asking me to call him i still was not asleep. so i got up called him, chatted for a while and then said goodnight and eventually went back to bed and slept..well, kind of anyway. perhaps its the odd-weather which is making my sleeping even worse. i dont know.


but yes. that's the end of this post. i feel rather...tired, and oddly angry, though i dont know why or about what. i think its just cos im tired. but i must say strangely enough its a nice change cos usually i would feel sad when im tired so yes, angry and annoyed it is! haha come and pick a fight with me! i dare u!

Gu Zheng


cathy posted a querie prompted by the busker in the city who plays his chinese stringed instrument almost daily for the passerbys. pop music and karaoke aside, did i see much traditional music while i was in China.

the answer is yes and no. i did see some traditional music occasionally, but no it wasnt very often, and it wasnt very varied. the instrument i saw (and sought out) the most was the giant, stringed instrument, the gu zheng, which i fell in love with.


at one of the palaces, in fact i think it was the summer palace in beijing i saw a little orchestra performing for an hour or so, and that was pretty cool. i didnt stay to watch the whole show but i saw a bit.


traditional music in china is often used more for background music, for example in teahouse style settings, to provide a nice atmosphere for chatting and relaxing etc.

and yeh, probably the first exposure i had to the guzheng was in a teahouse the uni loved taking us to at the end of any sort of 'outing' we had. it was a really cool teahouse by the way, but looked quite expensive! i dont think i could've gone there if the uni wasn't taking us all the time.


oh, and i think there was a russian girl who worked there! it seemed quite cool, and while the place looked really good, i dont think the pay is all that great. im assuming that girl a) has an interest in chinese traditions and b) couldnt work as an english teacher. sensibly she seemed to be avoiding the third option usually available to the russian girls, working as dancers or waitresses who have to play dice games and entertain the customers in the nightclubs. we almost got into that, im more than glad that it fell through though!!

back to music. so yes, in this cool teahouse they always had teapouring demonstrations for us, with some random host blabbing into a microphone commentating the whole thing, while some girl prepared and poured tea (spilling a lot, always, which reassured me about my own ability of spilling tea) into many little cups, while the man on her other side plucked and strummed the guzheng for atmosphere.


i'd heard about and seen photos of the guzheng before i'd first heard it played, 'cause my exchange sister's older cousin (therefore my 'older sister') mentioned that she had started learning it about 3 years ago. i told her she has to teach me some basics one day.

photos, i stumbled upon amongst hunting for images of the forms of traditional dress in the ancient dynasties.
i love gu zhuang (ancient clothes), they're supposedly where japanese kimono stemmed from.
and finally i heard it, in the teahouse, and at a few other orchestral performances throughout the year.


at another of the palaces they had a hall dedicated to musical instruments, it had a cool name, but i've forgotten it. most likely something about heaven and music in harmony or something similar.

i was with my family at this time, so we browsed through and cameron admired all the types of chinese drums.



one weekend though, katrina's (who i tutored) mum took me inter-city to see their homecity and take me to a mountain and see her school (she was the principal of the school), and she decided to pick out some students who were delegated the task of performing for my pleasure. so i ended up having a boy who i cant even remember his name lugging a guzheng into the principal's office one evening and then a little concert/ recital was put on, in honour of me. haha.

he was really good! i was torn between just listening and watching how fast his fingers flew across the strings (much the way i watch cathy's fingers on the piano!) and trying to record movie clips on my camera.



most annoyingly the other people in the room, a few teachers, the boy's mum and friend were all happily carrying on their conversations over the top of his music. i didnt understand it at the time, and thought it was quite rude, especially as they were making him perform, and if he stopped they'd encourage him to play some more, but i've realised by now that that's just part of the way china is. they dont have a 'quiet audience sort of etiquette'.


i'll try and post a movie clip, seeing as i've just noticed we can now.
ohh, u will have to scroll up to the top and turn off the music first. (if u haven't already haha!)

one of my uni teachers recently spoke a bit about peking opera and even he mentioned how part of the reason the opera is so loud, and the voices so shrill is because it's designed to be done over the top of a talking crowd, also originally in an outdoor sort of setting. i laughed when he imitated how amongst the chatting of the audience, occasionally one guy would take note of a particular part in the opera and therefore leap out of his seat, to clap a few times and shout out 'good! good!'.

i laughed 'cause lou and i had been invited to see a student performed play at the uni sometime mid last year and during the thankyou speeches and like a raffle ticket announcement or something similar before hand there was this man in fornt of us who kept doing exactly that! leaping out of his seat to boom out 'good! good!' energetically and approvingly, at the most uncalled for times....i mean, there was no performance happening, it was merely a very uneventful introductory speech. and then to our utmost surprise, as soon as the play actually started commencing he got up and left!!


but yeh, so i felt sorry for this poor boy being dragged out in the evening to put on a show for a random foreign girl, for no reason other than that she was foreign and had come to see him perform like an animal in a zoo, meanwhile his performance seemingly being ignored. perhaps to him it's all very quite normal but i was quite disappointed with the other 'audience' members.

i was quizzed on one of my favourite pop songs and hence he was also forced to play 'superstar' by s.h.e haha! i thought it sounded quite cool hehe. i like the end of this movie, haha it's cute.
he says 'it's too embarrassing!!'

and finally i got to get up close and personal with the guzheng, and try playing it for fun a few times. although i wasnt doing anything in particular it still sounded nice. everyone laughed that instead of taping my fingers up (with like guitar pick type things?) like a real guzheng musician i was just using my own talon like manicured fingernails. haha



so yes, i have decided it is one of my life-goals to one day learn to play the guzheng, though i imagine they will be damn expensive and seemingly a china-only instrument as i've got no idea how transporting one to australia would go.

but yes, they are very cool!

ohh, and i bought a bamboo flute too, when i was first hanging out with leo, 'cause i was sick of listening to one of the korean girls in the dorm murdering her violin, and i regretted not having brought my flute. the guy in the music shop kind of gave a demo on the flute and it was cool...but it took me like a week before i could get a sound out of it. it was kind of too frustrating, so the novelty wore off quick.


in the end the flute i bought was a bit dodgy, 'cause i found two cracks in the bamboo, one of which i sticky taped and unsurprisingly it was much easier to play afterwards! the main problem though, was the flute was a different key to a usual silver flute, and so the fingers for each note where up the creek and i couldnt work it out, also, it depends on fingers covering holes, much harder than a key on a flute covering the hole so yeh, all in all it was a little too perplexing for me.

i meant to bring the flute home, and painstakingly go through and chart each note and fingering pattern next to the notes of my silver flute, so i can play it, but with packing luggage problems it ended up being in with all the stuff i left behind.
so, i guess i just have to bring it home this time then, dont i. ^_^

a beautiful spring afternoon

oh! it's suddenly started raining! it's been such a beautiful, warm summery day, and now just as the sun was thinking about setting it's started raining - what a surprise!


i had a long sleep-in today, as it's my day off and i've been exhausted every day this week, and then i leisurely took my time getting ready and went to Eastland shopping center by bus.

all the shops are pretty boring at the moment! i keep waiting for the clothes and things to jump out at me, but nothing takes my fancy really. well, occasionally there's something alright - but it's usually accompanied by a very evil multiple digit price-tag.

i did however stumble my way into kmart, and almost accidentally, I ended up buying a pair of tatami-mat thongs. i've had a liking for tatami mat shoes for about 8 years i think, but i never actually had a pair. guess they were one of those things i'd just look at, and keep putting off actually buying.

but yes, i passed a rack they were on amongst the ugliest looking 'summer footwear' u have ever seen, with a big sign saying there was 20% of all the shoes...so the expensive $6 tatami-mat thongs turned out to be $4 or something. haha.


they're good actually. because they will solve the problem i've been having of having no 'summery' shoes, that aren't bright white, or blue, and these are nice and soft and wont cut my feet. im quite pleased with my unexpected buy!

so pleased i came home and did the dishes, put on the dishwasher and did a load of washing. (parents are away yet again, in case u hadnt guessed). which reminds me, i keep planning to have a korean movie afternoon... i wonder if people are free for sunday afternoon?? maybe its too late notice... hmmm, we shall see.


i cooked an interesting dinner last night. it was crepes with a savory mushroom sauce. was quite cool to prepare, only i stupidly burnt the knuckle of my left index finger on the side of the fry-pan. ouch!

i love my bright green jade bangle from katrina's mum. it's so gorgeous! i really love the brightness of the green.

as soon as i saw it in the cold jade factory i knew it was the one i liked best! there's no word to describe that shade of green except 'brilliant'. now that's its warm t-shirt weather i should be wearing it more often. pretty!

im dying my hair again tomorrow, and teaching linda to make biscuits, cos they've never used their oven before! haha. and it's biscuits because i discovered that linda is a kindred spirit, another self-confessed biscuit addict! ^_^

okay, i should go hang the washing on racks, and then i should take a look at my new linguistics assignment, and try and make a good dent in it before tomorrow. maybe i'll watch a korean movie too, actually. lou recommended a good one for me the other day with lots of our fave actors/actresses in it! good, sounds like a good evening in!