si! esame finito!

mid-semester examinations and assignments are finally over, at last i can take a break for a day or two before hitting back to books books books. it has been a while since i last blog and boy o boy i have so much to say.

first, an update on my studies. just finished my accounting paper today and it was quite ok except for time-management problems. guess i need to work a lot faster and accurately. still awaiting for my management assignment to be returned back, quite scared to see the results that i have gotten for this because it is an essay, cannot really write well. as for my law quizzes, pretty satisfied with my results till date. lastly for my marketing exam, did not expect to fare this well as the paper was very tricky. since the easter break till now, i have not focussed much on the lectures and tutorials as i was concentrating on my mid-sem examinations and assignments, so it is time to start catching up on all and pushed all the way for the final examination in june.

tuesday was the day i turned ventuno but did not celebrate as i had the accounting examination to prepare. nothing special but would like to sincerely thank all who had wished me and the one special person who tried to wish me but failed. i was thinking of going to a strip club to celebrate...

Ranger's parents, aunty cynthia and grandma are here to visit and cook for the three of us for a month. they said that i had put on some weight which i beg to differ. but since i have been here, i have been eating quite a lot, larger portions and also late-night suppers. the fast-food here is yummy, so in love with kfc's wicked wings and my favourite mcdonald's burgers and fries. single cheeseburgers to triple cheeseburgers and quarter-pounder burgers to double quarter-pounder burgers. end it with my favourite coca-cola or vanilla and chocolate milkshakes. before i end, pizzas here are so cheap, a large pizza costs just six bucks. however, these fast-foods are just my snack meals on the way home from UQ or late-night suppers. my breakfasts, lunches and dinners are proper meals from a traditional aussie breakfast of cereals or breakfast bars or eggs on toasts with a cup of cappuccino or latte to packed lunches of sandwiches or last night's dinner leftovers to delicious home-cooked dinner or wagyu beef steaks.

fortunately, we have a great chef friend, Don, whom Izaeel and i worked part-time for. he cooks yummy malaysian and singapore cuisines and makes good sushi, which makes me do not miss home at all. thumbs up for nasi lemak, satay, mee goreng, nasi goreng, char siew and crispy noodles. he takes care of us so well, always making food and giving fruits for us to eat and bring home. i am thinking of working for him during my winter and summer breaks so that i can learn from him. since working for Don and watching Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmare, i have thought of a couple of small food ventures. however, it will be difficult doing it alone and juggling my studies simultaneously. but i am thinking of trying maybe next year or the year after.

before i end, o yes, i experienced storm on monday. it was quite exciting and it is not rain droplets but hails raining down. quite dangerous if you do not have an umbrella with you and it is painful to be hit by one. the hails can break the windscreens of vehicles on the road. however, the storm came and left quite fast and out came the sun again. after which, i saw a spectacular rainbow from my room's window. beautiful...

mio scaduto palo

buona sera! its been almost one month since i last updated. and its been a month and a half since i have packed my bags to settle here. i'm into autumn now and the nights are getting colder, especially tonight.

tutorials have been not too bad. i must say that the time in tutorials are precious as i only get one session of fifty minutes per week for each subject except for accounting where there are two sessions. majority of my tutorial mates are locals. the international mates come from papua new guinea, china, hong kong, malaysia and new caledonia. it was tough in the beginning to understand their accent and because some of them their first language wasn't english so sometimes you have to put the words together and try to understand what they are saying. o yes, all my tutors are females and only one was local. two were asians and one was a brazilian who was a former lawyer. so you can see that not only there was an international mix of students but also tutors!

finally i have been concentrating in lectures. it was tough going back to lectures and to concentrate for two hours each time after two years of not attending one. it is difficult to absorb and take down important information with the lecturers speaking quite fast. imagine jotting down something the lecturer just said and also trying to listen to something which is different at the same time. but thanks to my mobile phone, i can record my lectures down and playback anytime.

i have been cooping at home the whole easter break to complete my one thousand four hundred word management assignment. it is going to be twenty percent of my final grading. first essay in two years and it is a major one. till date, i have completed it, just some editting and referencing left before i can hand it up. hope to fare reasonably well since my whole easter week was spent doing it. however, somehow i feel that it may be out of point, as usual. managed to catch step up two: the streets for only five seventy, so cheap. dance moves were awesome, especially the 'heartbeat' dance.

in two weeks' time, i got two mid-semester examinations - marketing (forty percent) and accoutning (twenty-five percent). i have not started revising for it yet since i have been struggling to complete my essay. will try to start tomorrow. its important to do well and get as much as you can from all these small percentages so that it will not be so stressful when the final examination comes.

the cold night is making me sleepy so till next time, buona notte!

venerdi manifestazione

yesterday was quite an eventful day for me. however it was at the expense of me having to complete three chapters of textbook reading and three tutorials today and tomorrow. so i shall make this a pretty short write-up.

woke up early morning not to prepare for lectures or tutorials but to accompany my ex secondary schoolmate, yue ying, for her horse riding test session at Wattle Creek Riding School at Kays Road. it was a thirty minutes bus ride on bus three-eight-one from the city. Wattle Creek is situated in the midst of a residential area at the foot of a mountain so imagine waking up to the neighs of the horses instead of the sound of roosters. rides cost sixty for half an hour but it will be cheaper if one is learning in groups of four. well i am still undecided if i would like to learn horse riding due to the price.

even a horse needs regular dental checkup

Wattle Creek Riding School

getting ready for a ride

a horse pee

in the evening, Ranger, Izaeel and I attended the Russell Peters & Friends comedy performance at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibtion Centre after we had a vietnamese dinner at West End. It was a very hilarious performance, laughing non-stop throughout. His funny friends were Ahmed Ahmed and Jo Koy. you should youtube them and check out their jokes.

Izaeel & Ranger

that's it for today folks, need to study now. tutorials will start next week so hope to see lotsa babes in my tutorial classes.

lezione settimana

lectures have officially started this week and i have just attended all my lectures for the week. thus tomorrow and friday will be free as tutorials wil begin on monday. law and marketing lectures seemed interesting while accounting and management lectures are quite sleepy, think it is because of the way the lecturers explain the concepts and theories. the lecturers have really good stamina as they can speak continuously non-stop and that makes it quite difficult to multi-task of jotting down important points, absorbing it and listening at the same time. well, this is something that i have to learn and adapt fast though.

lots of food outlets in school. majority are situated in the UQ Union area where there are bookshop, bakery, pizza place, juice bar, coffee joint, food court which is called the Main Refectory, noodle shop, sushi bar (the aussies love sushi!), bank, travel agency, pharmacy, hair salon, music shop, optical and dental services and a bar called the Red Room. the Main Refectory sells pastas, kebabs, burgers, pies, drinks, snacks (fries and other fried food), sandwiches etc. the sandwiches are self-made and one can add as much ingredients into it as the price goes by the weight of the sandwich. food are priced from about four dollars onwards and an average meal, inclusive of a drink, will make you seven dollars poorer. therefore you will see many students bring packed lunch to school with the chinese nationalites bringing their fried rice and the rest such as the aussies, blondes, brunettes and myself bringing sandwiches or pasta. we can heat up our food courtesy of four microwave ovens that were donated eons ago. quite a surprise to see microwave ovens though.

queuing up for a free can of red bull. a can cost three seventy in Main Refectory

the 'red bull' girls

'red bull' car that runs on red bull

microwave ovens

UQ duck family

UQ duck family

aint the ducks adorable? i was going for lecture and saw duck family near the lake. as i was walking to the UQ Lake Station bus stop, the ducks were still around. took a couple of photos of them. in real life, you do not get to see nine ducklings following their lovely duck parents. what a beauty! it made my day!

weather has been pretty good with cool air and sunshine. completed my first run of five km today since i became an 'aussie'. the run was good with downslopes in the beginning to warm-up and then ending off with tough upslope of about forty-five degrees for a distance of about four hundred metres.

so sorry but have not taken much photos of UQ's buildings and landscape. will do it soon for you.

UQ's O-Week 2008

g'day mates! time passed by so fast that it has already been a week since i left singapore. pretty much settled down into the aussie lifestyle.

this week was o-week, orientation week, for the international students who came from all over the world to study and make friends in UQ. some statistics on where we, the international students, came from: leading the chart is china, second is united states, third will be malaysia and singapore lies fourth on the list with one hundred and ninety six. we also have representatives from afghanistan, argentina, kuwait, russia, african nations, germany, finland, norway, united kingdom, trinidad & tobago, japan, korea, cambodia, etc. too many countries to list out but there are about two thousand of us, undergrads and postgrads. i think it is going to be exciting yet challenging to go out and take the initiative to say "hi, i'm daniel and i'm from singapore. how about you?". don't you think so?

o-week is all about attending the various talks by the university's admin office, the student services department, the faculty and also talks on study skills such as plagiarism, note-taking, referencing, etc. i find the study-skills talks informative as i am not taught much on note-taking and referencing in singapore. come to think of it, i think it is going to be an uphill task to study four different courses for one semester when i have not touched any books for the past two years. o yes, during o-week, there were also free thirst quenching drinks given out too. weather has been pretty hot the last couple of days with temperatures rising to a high of thirty-six degree celsius today. there was also 'market day' where the various clubs and societies set-up booths and pull new students into their club or society. first time seeing the campus being so crowded, especially in the Great Court.

i must admit i have not made any friends during this o-week. it is quite difficult as you are unsure who will be your lecture and tutorial mates. moreover i do not live in any of the uni's hostels. so it is quite sad and lonely to walk from one building to another a-l-o-n-e and seeing different groups of students chatting away. luckily for me, i have a trio of secondary school mates who are also studying in the same campus with me, though studying different degrees. o well, lets just hope that i will make more international friends when lessons officially start on monday.

yesterday was the first time i walked around the city and i did it alone. took a bus down and the journey was about fifteen minutes. initially, i was lost but managed to get my bearings after i circled the place. the shopping belt is along queen street. compare to singapore, the shopping scene here is not as big. however, i think it is good enough for me since i do not shop much unless there are great sales, like those in their factory outlets. below are photos of the Brisbane Museum and Conrad Treasury Casino which i passed by:

Brisbane Museum

Conrad Treasury Casino

have been living the life of a pig lately, eating and sleeping a lot with no exercise except for my daily hundred push-ups. o well, my ankle has not fully recovered, still giving me pains. asked ranger to drive me around the estate to scout for running routes and hoping to do one hilly five km route which seems to be a never ending bending road.

my apologies but i will post photos of UQ soon, so do keep a lookout. see ya!