CASTING LIST

okay as requested by fenella, here is my casting list! hopefully it will make people who read this less confused LOL.

in no order of importance whatsoever.

mr liang: the towkay of the company who is currently in singapore/china and plays badminton every monday tuesday and thursday and cycles nearly every other day he doesn't play badminton. he has a very nice house and has been here for 16 years. his daughter is super pretty and looks like she's come out from a korean movie.

sheena: the HR manager and QA manager who has been tasting my very very hot chilli sauce and giving me very valuable comments on how to improve it. also the wife of mr liang.

uncle gary: the owner of the house i stay in and also the general manager of the company. he is left handed too! :D he manouvers bends and turns at 50-60km/h and i'm like :O. also brother of sheena.

aunty suvy: the lady owner of the house i stay in who is super pro at shopping and buying stuff that is super worth it. and she is a highly proficient homemaker that makes very good kway chap, tom yum soup, horfun, tau suan, hainanese chicken rice, tapioca cake, french fries, roasted chicken wings, butter and coffee cake, chwee kueh, ETC.

linnett: daughter of uncle gary and aunty suvy, she owns a horse and a guinea pig and takes really good care of them, and she's hoping to be a vet next time. wish i could be like her.

clarence: the food technologist who is my immediate supervisor who was in NUS FST's very first batch, who salutes nicole as she walks past him to go to the toilet, says good afternoon to colin every MORNING when he arrives, jumps on the spot in the lab and has a kid that is highly mischievous and looks set to follow after his crazy father's footsteps lol.

colin: a portuguese man who lived in singapore last time and used to work with singapore airlines and can cook very well. he offered us tempeh to eat yesterday and it was SUPER yummy. the first piece of advice he gave to us when clarence first introduced us to him was: "don't listen to anything that clarence says."

nicole: the receptionist whom i get along with quite well and likes to do stupid things to clarence like hide under his desk, steal his biscuits, or turn his desktop wallpaper pink. she names her desk freddie and refuses to let me touch him.

wayne: the crazy guy in the lab (refer to past entries for evidence) who is addicted to milk coffee and always brings the students out. his official post is known as lab technician but he pretty much dabbles in everything in the whole factory. if there were a hit list for the number of times a name is called in a day, wayne's would be top of the list everyone is always going "wayne! wayne! wayne! wayne!" or calling on the phone to say "can i speak to wayne please?" or opening the door and asking "is wayne there? or where's wayne?" lol.

tracey: another wacky lab QA personnel who is very efficient at her work and likes to sing funny songs and make funny faces through the sample holding window.

annita: a very nice jolly samoan lady who always says 'i shall be gone' everytime she goes on a break and i find that very funny. and her catchphrase is 'i'm so tired...' because she really honestly doesn't sleep much.

uncle kim: the in charge at the kitchen and can be very animated at times it's very interesting to watch.

uncle benji: guy in charge of the warehouse who has a naturally LOUD voice when he calls on the phone u can put the phone like 30cm away from ur ear and still hear him. he always likes to go 你们在干嘛！and all my failed attempts of chilli making go into a container which he eats with his dinner. lol.

uncle johan: he is very fatherly and very nice and treated us to drinks the other time and lost city. but he gets stressed up when the machines aren't going well.

aunty eileen: brought us to work before uncle gary's family came back from singapore, and treated us to country roast chicken that was sooo nice. she works at the filling area and is very quick with her hands.

lorna: kiwi gal working out at filling area who always calls me shorty

teina: maori lady working out at filling area who treated me and zj to steak and mushroom pie which is very yummy. and every time she eats mi goreng, she gives me the chilli part of the seasoning cos she doesn't eat it. lol.

mark and matthew:brothers working at different parts of the factory and are both very nice.

david: wayne's favourite boy. who loves to party and can even come to work hungover. but he is a nice guy

marcus: american guy working out at filling area that loves to sing and disturb me. lol

michael: this really friendly and nice guy with a very bushy beard who surfs and bushwalks.

dion: works at the raw materials warehouse weighing stuff. and he can eat spicy stuff too. he makes chili or spaghetti in huge bulks on the weekend, and packs them up into containers so he can bring them to lunch every day during weekdays.

stephanie, renae, william, belinda, jenefer, debbie, chris, tom, josh, craig, johnny, derek, aunty eng, sean--all the people working in packaging or filling or kitchen, or maintenance. ruth works part time as a food technologist.

amelia: the fantastic wonderful brilliant girl that is on industrial attachment in pfi that every body absolutely loveesss. LOL.

i can't believe this.

i can't believe this. that i look forward to the weekedays where i can go to work more than the weekends.

this sat and sunday is going to be another weekend of sian-ness. on sat, i will be a good girl and stay at home and book all the europe stuff. on sun, i will go out on my own, but damn i have to be home so early. i need a bloody car.

can't wait for next monday to come.

okayyy, 3rd entry in a day lol.

i'm just very fascinated by how the seasons change. in aust it's like, oh one day it's summer, and just suddenly, the next day is already autumn. there's like no gradual change in the weather, it's just *snap* from one season to the next. today it is markedly cooler, and the wind is like howling. the wind is really cold, and now the autumn temperature actually feels like the mornings and nights while i was in US. today i just started wearing track pants in the house instead of my normal fbts, and my feet still feel cold. the floor is so cold. lol. tonight, i don't think we need to use the fan anymore as we always do at night at top speed, just with the window open we're gonna have natural air con. haha.

the aircon in the office is crazy.

it adjusts its temperature according to the temperature outside.

when it's really HOT outside, like 30-34 degrees, the aircon turns into a heater and the office feels like a sauna.

and now, it's storming outside, with the rain blowing the trees about and the sky really dark and all, and this VERY SMART aircon is blowing right at me at full blast. i am totally freezing here.

该冷的时候不冷，该热的时候不热。this is one weird aircon.

autumn dawns in a few days

autumn is coming soon, and during this season transition period, it will be raining. feels quite the same for me right now....because after yesterday.. i now know that one cannot do without the other, and vice versa, and i have never been part of the picture. what three? it has always only been 2.

more random things.

random 1: i found out that lime juice concentrate is ..guess what. BLACK in colour. it's like gross and it smells gross. it's like over-limey and smells artificial.

random 2: today i got feedback about my chilli sauce again and they still find it not citrusy enough and too garlicky. so i had to do it again, but this time we replaced one of the ingredients with cider vinegar, and i added to much so it became sour chilli but i liked it. lol oh well what do my hedonic opinions matter when it comes to product matching? lol. yar so i have to redo again. and when i was gathering my ingredients, i looked at my mango puree and it had like white mouldy stuff growing on the surface and black furry mould growing on the walls of the container. and i showed it to tracey who smelled it and said it smelt like vomit. i was NOT going to put my nose anywhere near that container after that.

random 3: i was on the phone with clarence near the end of the day about my chilli sauce, and wayne was next to me using tape to tape some labels to the form. and then he started being stupid and tried to stick scotchtape over my mouth. while i was talking over the phone. and while trying to avoid him i got distracted and clarence was like 'what are you doing?!?!!' and then wayne really went and pasted a piece of scotch tape over my mouth lol and i was trying to get the tape off my mouth with clarence in the background going 'oi what are wayne and u doing ah!' lol den i said i was being tortured and i asked clarence to help me and wayne went and stuck a piece of scotchtape over the phone receiver and speaker in an attempt to block the sound from going thru lol. and all that happened while i was talking on the phone. wayne is crazy. who on earth gets scotchtape stuck over their mouths by a colleague while on industrial attachment lol.

random 4: i want to learn from aunt suvy and be a savvy shopper. she buys all these pretty dinner dresses with really nice satin-y material that looks like 100-200+ bucks, but in actual fact she gets them at realllyyyy discounted prices like from 99 bucks to 19.90 or 270 dollars to 60 dollars. i'm like O: i want also. she has fate with pretty discounted dresses. lol.

pubbing on friday, casino on saturday, church on sunday!

2 vices in 2 days, and then off to church on sunday. lol what a contrast.

on friday night,went to lost city which is a drinking place, with pool and pokies. it was supposed to be a work thing, but alot of people at work played us out cos they had something on or they had no money to come out and drink. uncle johan came and treated me and zj to drinks. zj had a drink called lost in love or something, and i had a tequila sunrise. wayne me zj and david went together, and met sean and his gf, and craig and his wife, and michael came along too. michael is a really good guy. i like him. and david was drunk even before he reached lost city and he was really quite funny to watch. we left lost city at bout 12, and went down to Gilhooleys Irish pub ( i think) at logan hyperdome. there was a dance floor there and compared to lost city, it was really crowded and brimming with people. but i think not as crowded yet as some singapore clubs can be. and i just drank some lime bitters there, and wayne treated us to drinks. and then wayne asked us if we wanted to go down to the dance floor and dance and i was like i don't know how to dance, and he replied oh there's not much space there anw u can't really dance u just bob with the crowd so uhh yeah we went on to the dance floor and bobbed. -.- and then there were 2 weird guys who danced weirdly who kept wanting to come into our circle. so strange. and like i felt absolutely lilliputian while i was there with all the huge and tall aussies towering over me.

on saturday, we went with uncle gary and the entire chinese family to go eat some big dinner at top 1, the whole place was booked by someone, and there was lion dance and wushu and karaoke and all that.the lion dance was interesting,cos they gave every table red packets, and u put money in the red packets and the lion would come round and grab them, and the people from our tables were trying to put them in high and weird places so that the lion would have to stand up to get it. and then they took the cabbage and tore it apart and threw it about in pieces and then everyone was trying to catch the cabbage and uncle benji caught a huge bunch and shared amongst all of us and we had to eat it because it was 'lucky' cabbage. the food was really good, it was like $68 bux a table like zomg so expensive and they had deep fried lobster and shark fin soup and scallop with broccoli and abalone with mushroom and fish and roast chicken and prawn balls etc. but honestly the lobster was fantastic man it's super good. and after that we went down to the casino, and walked around for about 2 hrs while uncle gary tried his hand at the tables.

and today, i went to church!! i've already blogged about that, in justabagatelle.wordpress.com :) but church was good. feels really nice to go to sunday worship in aust, after so long. and it's a cool experience too, going to a church somewhere other than in singapore.

feel like a chicken in a coop

i wanna go out for the weeeeeekend!!!!! RAWR THERE IS NO WHERE TO GO. and no one to go with :(

more not so good things..

QA has been relatively fun, but repetitive. haha. but well as i said before, it is fun working in the lab so i'm not complaining. haha.

today, uncle gary was on the way sending linnett to sch, and we were at the back of the car, when suddenly the car at the back rammed into us. it was quite a hard bang, and it was a loud one too. we were all super shocked. thought that with that kinda impact the entire back would be dented in. but there was only a small rectangular dent that u can see only if you look really carefully. and it was a new car too. that's the good thing u have, when a kia hits a brand new 2000cc honda accord lol.

spate of bad things happening the past 2 days..

ystd.. the internal server went down. everyone couldn't use their computers to work, so that was a lot of down time. and the p8 belt couldn't work for some reason. so they couldn't label the products.

today..we brought kway chap to work..when we got to the factory, we found out that one of the container's soup had all spilled out, onto the box carton we put it in, and some of it seeped out onto the boot. so first things first, had to clean the wet part of the boot with all the kway chap soup. the star wheel was down, and the p8 belt was still not moving.. so one of the lines started out late. and then like i went to eat lunch..and the sky was realllyyyy dark and then it started raining very heavily. so i enjoyed the rain..got a little drenched cos it was nice and refreshing.

and after that my lunch break was almost over and i was in the pantry washing up my lunch box etc.. and then the lights flickered once. and then it flickered again, and then it went out. some main power generator in the suburb experienced a voltage shock or sth. and the entire area had a power outage problem. when i peeked back into the lab, the factory was pitch black and everyone was walking around with flash lights. it was kinda cool in a way!! lol. and this time NOBODY could do anything. lol. yeah the lights came back on like about 2 hrs later. and so today the production went very very late. when i left at 7...all the lines were still in production, and alot of the people were still working there!! poor them. :( but poor me too! i am supposed to finish at 5 (by right) but by left..i always end up working till 6 or 7. like today. lol.

okay i'm v slpy i'm going to slp goodnight bye

singapore-style chinese new year in a foreign land

okayyy so i celebrated chinese new year in a foreign land.

some similarities, some differences.

Similarity 1:
they have steamboat for reunion dinner too, with tofu and mushrooms and fishballs and succulent sweet huge prawns
Difference 1:
i miss home's tanghoon and chicken breast meat and quail eggs and tang-oh veggie and my yummy garlic chilli and the soup and the golden enoki mushrooms.

Similarity 2:
they go around every house and bai nian with 2 mandarin oranges and say 4 worded chinese sayings. (although most of the time it is GONG XI FA CAI GONG XI FA CAI GONG XI FA CAI!)
Difference 2:
they don't do it at the doorstep or the moment we arrive, like how i do it in singapore. they do it only after a while, and then like the elders will take turns to sit at the couch, and after that the young people will go one after another to bai nian. and if you are bai nian-ing to your own parents, you have to kneel down.

Similarity 3:
all the host's houses have lots of food.
difference 3:
different from the food we have during new year in singapore, like the cookies, and bak kwa, and my fave prawn roll crackers, and for my family curry and pig's organ soup and mushrooms with fa cai, the houses had preserved plums etc, and popiah and satay and lontong and sushi and home made sharks fin soup and kway chap. and yu sheng. which my family never has for cny

difference 4
the shows they watch on tv are chinese satellite tv, i.e. all the china channels, so it's a lot of atmosphere. we actually hear chinese new year songs playing on the tv on 初一, but the difference is that the way people from china (and taiwan and hong kong at that), celebrate chinese new year very very differently from singapore, so it's hard to relate at times.

difference 5.
i have no holiday today :( but NEH MIND. tmr is PAY DAY. :D

a little mundane as of late

things haven't been all that interesting as of late.. i'm like upstairs doing all the random paperwork that's to be done, and once in a while making chilli sauce. lol.

yesterday wayne hid tracey's car keys in a glove in the drawer so she couldn't go home when she finished work.. and then in the end zj couldn't bear tracey looking high and low for the keys so she told tracey where it was. so tracey devised a way to get back at wayne.. she took his car keys and hid them in the glove instead and told us to tell him that she was so pissed at finding the keys that she took her spare keys and went home. so this would make wayne think that those were tracey's keys in the glove instead of his own! lol.

this weekend's chinese new year. i always never fancied going to bai nian and meeting ppl and have them say the same things year after year. but being away from home this time made me appreciate how blessed one is to be with family during the festive period. sigh. emo emo emo.

a few non-human things i miss in singapore.

in no order of importance whatsoever. just whatever comes to my mind at 12 midnight when my brain is half dead.

1) cluthie.
2) bubble tea
3) Ash
4) my LENOVO laptop. (lousy shit toshiba)
5) some food in singapore that i miss like nanxiang's suan la mian and salted egg prawn and da long bao and ding tai fung's xiao long baos and the balestier bak kut teh and ajisen and teppanyaki.
6) UPDATE 1: as my sister just nicely reminded me. i will miss steamboat on new year's eve. i will miss the garlic chilli and the chicken and the prawn and the mushrooms and the tofu and the tang-oh and the tanghoon and the zomg damn nice soup.
7) i will miss eating hay-bee-hiam. and the japanese cracker our family always has on new years. and the chocolate marshmallows. and the curry at home. and mum mama's yummy peppery pig's organ soup that i always have seconds and thirds and fourths. OMG I HAVE TO WAIT AN ENTIRE YEAR TO DRINK THAT AGAIN D: and the mushroom and the 发菜！！！！GAH.
8) i will miss the angbaos because i honestly need the money for europe. haha.

Happy thing that happened this morning!

We received the reply from the company that i was matching the chilli for. According to them, the sauce is 'very close', but seems to have diminished lime/citrus notes. If the elements were more balanced, it would be a real winner! YAY!

on a very random note, I am learning to eat like an Aussie. VEGEMITE FTW.

and looks like the next product i'll be working on is mayo. pg yu's favourite.

while i was cooped up in my little shell

while i was at home cooped up because of the rain, i didn't know that the situation was actually that bad out there. in places like coomera, oxenford (5 mins drive away), etc etc many other places..it was actually flooding really badly. people's horses got washed away and drowned..and like some people lost their boats..land was all covered over by water, roads were flooding so high that ppl that did not heed the flood warning and continued driving had to be rescued from cars...etc etc.

here are the news sites:
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/mother-dies-in-central-queensland-floods-20100207-nklw.html

pictures of the floods with random surfing people in between
http://tools.goldcoast.com.au/photo-gallery/photo_gallery_popup_preview.php?category_id=13021&offset=0

another dreary weekend

in aust, when you don't have a car, and it rains, you pretty much can't go ANYWHERE.

wanted to go to currumbin wildlife sanctuary ystd, and we even had free entry. but because i overslept and it was raining, byebye currumbin. we went to pacific fair and did some shopping instead, and had yum kfc for dinner. mashed potato here tastes different from singapore's. very different. i used to hate that taste when i was young (yes i still remember that it's that taste) but now somehow i like it. it's addictively nice.

today it was raining somemore so yeah can't go anywhere again. we had meehoonkuay for lunch which was nice. we're going to the saltwater creek park behind our house later. if we are like SUPER SUPER SUPER LUCKY. we might be able to catch a koala on the tree? or spot a kangaroo. lol.

Australia day entry

and finally the long awaited australia day entry.

yep so on australia day, we went out with wayne and nathan to wet and wild. it was honestly a very different experience from the time we went out to wet and wild on our own. it was really fun, cos we got to switch around for rides with 2 person tubes and we sat with different ppl. we did the tornado altogether first, and that was really fun. and we did that another time after that some time later in the day and that one we went REALLY high. lol. and then after that we tried the kamikaze it was zj and my first time, and like i had a feeling that wayne and nathan were snickering at me screaming my way down.

aft tt i sat the black hole with nathan, and it was super different from the time i sat with zhujun because he was making the tube go higher at the bends and like somehow it was faster?? and all that in complete darkness. haha. i also went on the mach 5 tube thing with wayne and toward the end when we were reaching the splash he purposely pulled the back of the tube up or sth so that a huge wave of water came smashing right into my face and he was like laughing the whole way when he saw the water come at me. -.-

halfway, they decided to like go and have a leisurely float down this river where everyone has their own tube, it's basically not a ride. i tot ok that's gonna be relaxing, nothing thrilling for now. i sat on the tube..floated for a while backward..and then wayne came toward me and started pushing my tube. so i tot i was too slow and he just wanted me to go faster. little did i know he was conspiring with nathan who was behind me and so when i reached nathan he overturned my entire tube + me sitting on it. there goes my time of relaxation. wayne managed to overthrow zj as well! all by himself. pity nathan and i were hiding somewhere conspiring to do something to wayne that i didn't catch it. the rest of the ride was spent trying to overthrow each other and doing stupid things to each other. after that we went to the wave pool, and w. and nathan went very far out and i was like zomg i am not a good swimmer i have to be at some part of the pool where my feet can actually touch the ground. then the waves started, and i was at like in limbo between the my-feet-can-touch-the-ground side and the AHHH-it's-too-darn-deep side. and when the waves came i kept drinking water. and nathan and wayne were trying to teach me how to ride with the waves, and zj caught on quite easily (maybe cos she's taller lah hmph) and i was like drinking gulp after gulp of chlorinated water (+ possibly with additional traces of human excreta) and coughing the hell away and wayne said after that he thought i was going to drown lol. i myself tot i was going to drown by the way i was drinking gulp after gulp of water and not being able to breathe properly.but thankfully, i got the hang of the wave soon after that.

so we left wet and wild early, and went home to bathe. den they came to pick us up again, and we went to the train station to take the train down to southbank. at southbank we found a beautiful vantage spot along the river and when the fireworks started at 7.30 (complete with accompanying music) we were like RIGHT IN FRONT of the fireworks. it was so pretty. i sorta regret not taking the video of the entire fireworks but then again it was like 10 minutes long. yep they had really interesting fireworks too, they had ones that could float on the river. after that, we wanted to have crepes at the crepe cafe but it was closed. and like everything else on southbank was so expensive. on top of that, it was a public holiday, so everything had like 10% or 15% surcharge. and cold rock had a LONG LONG LONG queue. so we just had some mushroom chicken wrap, and after that we took the train back to helensvale and had macs soft serve ice cream!!

(update: and we played ispy too on the way back and i refused to give up whenever they asked 'give up?' haha)

it was a really fun day :)

long overdue brisbane entry.

hokays the very long awaited brisbane entry.

so basically on 22nd jan, we went up to brisbane with clarence. we visited his home, and he made dinner for us. there was like some fried pork and curry chicken with chicken wings and dumplings and of cos.... CHICKEN FEET. somehow in aust, wherever i go, chicken feet comes and haunts me. so yeah. i had to like make myself eat one again. but this time i could see all the little circles on the skin of the feet and i was like omg omg omg i can't eat this omg.

and clarence's 4 year old sun is one hell of a mischievous kid. he is quite a handful. lol like father like son i bet clarence was like that when he was 4. we brought his son, kai xiong, to the playground, where he played for a while, and when it got dark we went home. after that we all drove up to brisbane.

we got to this place called somewheretostay, which was somewheretostay for us for the next 2 nights, it's a cosy little backpacker hostel on a steep slope. haha. and they have 2 resident cats, both of which were not very friendly and one even chomped on my hand when i tried to pet it under the chin. that night, we visited the southbank lifestyle market, which was quite interesting to look, but to look only. everything there is like ex. even a pair of earrings are AT LEAST $8 AUD.

all in all, over that night and the next few days, we visited southbank, which is really cool because it has a man made beach in the middle of the city, complete with sand and all, queen's street mall, which is basically just like a shopping ctr..ANZAC square, city hall, post office square, chinatown (which was SERIOUSLY nothing much cos it was under construction), botanical gardens, queensland university of technology, conrad treasury casino, which looks like all other casinos. lol. brisbane city reminds me of singapore's cbd area which overlooks the singapore river, because there's this big river too (we sat on the city cat boat which goes along the river =] ) and the CBD overlooks the river. and the bridges spanning across the river are all very beautifully constructed, nicer than singapore's.

on sat night, which was also zhujun's bday, we met up with nicole, and her best friend monique. they brought us to have a nice dinner, and that was the first time in aust we had steak!!! which was yummy, and rather affordable. so ironic eh, go to aust, the land of steaks, and only get to eat steak 25 days later. honestly i miss eating it. amelia needs more steak in her stomachhhhh! RAWR. they were both dressed up very glammy because they were both gonna club later. and the strangest thing is in singapore, people eat before drinking so that they don't get drunk, over here, they want to purposely NOT eat so that they can get drunk. they wanted to bring us to the casino after that, but the guards didn't let us in cos we were wearing thongs (the aussie term for beach sandals and flip flops).pfft. so they brought us to an irish pub instead, where the music was SO LOUD YOU HAD TO SHOUT LIKE THIS TO BARELY BE HEARD and zj and i shared a frozen margarita which was yummy and we watched 40-50 + year old women that looked old and yet still going to these places to club and dance. and they were wearing like blinking lights over their necks. and nicole was going like that's one tragic woman. and i agree. it's quite sad. shouldn't these people be over partying by now and acting their age? like doing more constructive things like spending time with their families or sth. =/

yeps so more or less that's it about brisbane. brisbane can probably be better summarized by fotos. haha. facebook will have fotos soon!!

ok watch this space soon for australia day entry! haha.

daily happenings.

i did chilli sauce the whole day today. but i finally succeeded in matching the product and the samples got sent out to the company!! clarence even said that the final time really looked like the original sample. feel so accomplished. yay!

today, clarence called wayne and i was in the r&d lab with wayne. wayne picked up the fone and put up a girly voice and said "hello! amelia speaking!" and i was like HOI!

and nicole turned clarence's wallpaper bright pink and it was so funny because clarence is so spastic. he went and turned it green and i was like ewww pink suits u better and he was like good what green wallpaper good for the eyes. and then i went and turned wayne's wallpaper pink too when he wasn't looking. lol.

and another time clarence was in the lab. and then the phone in the lab rang and the caller id said clarence because the caller was calling from his phone upstairs. so wayne was like oh hey clarence u can go pick up the phone and talk to yourself.

yeah today's happenings were very clarence-y and wayne-y because i was stuck in the r&d lab doing chilli sauce the whole day. and look what random funny rubbish these 2 ppl came up with. lol.

FST3181 is one of the best modules i've done.

in NUS. being 8 MCs, and pass fail, that's not the end of it.

i find that i am learning alot from many different areas, and the best of all

i absolutely love going to work. and i feel really happy when i get off work at the end of the day, not because it's the end of the day and i don't need to work anymore, but cos it's been a happy day at work.

i enjoy what i do, especially when it's multifaceted and not just basically the same thing that you do over and over again.

and i must say it is definitely the people that make the job so much more fun, interesting, and enjoyable. people that work at PFI are crazy. like gaga bonkers crazy.

Clarence does weird things like jumps around on the spot in the lab, salutes nicole when she walks past to go the toilet, and whispers to me on the phone about having a bbq at wayne's house and bringing a sheep. wayne can turn a bostwick test into a commentary of a sauce race, and tortures me about being short, and i torture him back about not being able to multitask, and tracey and annita and nicole are just such nice people, telling funny cow jokes,and it's funny watching them make fun of wayne or clarence. like how annita stares at clarence and goes.."you're crazy" in a such a serious manner it's so funny. and how tracey told me to speak in maori to annita to tell her i was going to the toilet (fadi-paku or sth) to have my food (kai).

wayne tells me they're working on me right now. by the end of april, i'll be just as crazy.

and gah i still need to blog about my brisbane weekend and australia day and post fotos on facebook and update my wordpress!!!!! RAWR

THERE ARE HORSES IN MY BACKYARD!!!!

yesterday, we decided to have a quiet day at home. which turned out to be a not so quiet day.

because linnett (the daughter of the homeowner of the house we stay in) turned up and rang the doorbell with jade (her best friend), both of them on horse back.

so basically they rode their horses from the stable all the way back home, and then they led the horses into the backyard.

i was like OMG THIS IS WAYYYY COOL.so yeah they started destroying the garden cos they're heavy and their hooves were leaving patches in the grass, and basically they were pretty hungry after all that travelling..so nom nom nom nom nom nom. i had a horse like up close breathing on me and that was pretty cool. and i watched them poop and pee in the backyard and uncle gary and aunt suvy were like oh there's our fertilizer! and they started picking up all the poop and putting it into their potted plants. lol.

and i got to ride bow (the white one)!!!! :D


it's like cool stuff i don't even need to go on a farm. i have horses in my backyard!

but of cos after that they rode the horses back to the stable.

and today, i was supposed to stay home again cos plans for seaworld fell thru, but wayne called in the morning and woke me up (it was like 11 am lol) and said there was a food and wine festival at the convention centre tt we could go to. so i went (cos zj had a very impt test to do and she had to stay home ): ) and when i got there i found out it was technically a "wine with just a little food festival" cos there were like SO MANY booths for wine companies and vineyards etc. so we like tried a lot of different wines and beers and coffee (for some reason yeah coffee) and they were having the latte art competition finals and the people were like GOOD. so it was kinda nice to watch. and there was a little food, like salsa dips and hams and cheeses and yogurt and ICE CREAM, but yeah mainly wines. i learnt quite a bit about wines today! like i nv knew all along that the dessert wine that i liked had super high alcohol because i thought since it had so much sugar content the alcohol level would be low because not much was converted. but apparently, it has both high alcohol and high sugar so ALOT of sugar must have been added at the start of fermentation. and i like shiraz better than cabernet sauvignon, and i can't really rmb how merlot was like. lol and i learnt that dessert wines are called fortified wines, and the white ones are called muscats i think and the red ones are port. and i tasted a 13 yo vintage port. and i learnt wayne used to be a chef! the kind that does pretty decorative dishes with sauces and stuff and i was like that's so cool.

fenene tells me i shd have a legend for all the initials because the initials are quite hard to follow. haha maybe i'll do one up soon. or maybe i'll just start typing their names down because i'm too lazy to do it haha