memories

studying for my history exam tmr with itunes plugged in.

music is always a bringer of the past.

as forever young starts playing, so do snapshots of memories in my head.

i did say that this song would forever be associated with australia.

Can you imagine when this race is run
Turn our golden faces into the sun

hmm what do i remember? i remember the drive home from byron bay in the blue ford fairmont. playing music from the cds, songs, singing along to them. as the day drew to a close.. from noon, leaving byron, going past different places on the coast... till sunset drew near at burleigh and to the end of a great weekend.

So many adventures couldn't happen today
So many songs that we forgot to play
So many dreams swinging out of the blue
We let them come true

i remember the photo slideshow...how playing it brought a new section to the slideshow.. how the photos, too brought back all the good times, how they were over and it was time to say goodbye to those experiences.

it's a happy nostalgia, but also a bit of a stinging nostalgia.

_____________________________________________________________________________________
Forever Young
Let's dance in style, let's dance for a while
Heaven can wait we're only watching the skies
Hoping for the best, but expecting the worst
Are you gonna drop the bomb or not

Let us die young or let us live forever
We don't have the power, but we never say never
Sitting in a sand-pit, life is a short trip
The music's for the sad men.

Can you imagine when this race is run
Turn our golden faces into the sun
Praising our leaders, we're getting in tune
The music's played by the mad men

Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever, forever?
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever, forever?

Some are like water, some are like the heat
Some are a melody, some are the beat
Sooner or later they all be gone
Why don't they stay young?

It's so hard to get old without a cause
I don't want to perish like a fading horse
Youth is like diamonds in the sun
and diamonds are forever

So many adventures couldn't happen today
So many songs that we forgot to play
So many dreams swinging out of the blue
We let them come true

Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever, forever?
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever, forever?

Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever, forever?

Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever, forever?

i can't think of a title

in london right now, struck with the blogging bug. blogged one line on od, then decided to blog at livejournal, blogged there halfway, and jumped here to blog. lol. will go back to those later. anyway. until i find the time and the mood, this blog is probably going to be on a permanent hiatus. hoho. what an oxymoron. and i have no idea when that would be, since it is now europe, then it would be china, and then there'd be so many more things to write about to blog about and to do, and then after china there'd be fyp, and the start of school, and then shit begins for one year, and after this the reality of the working world would face me. so basically, after the dream worlds of australia and europe, we start with the beginning of the end when china descends, cos that's summer school anyway. a summer school that i have NOT prepared for at all, and intend to smoke my way thru, when i have nothing in my head and can't smoke at all. good job amelia u are so dead.

i am still left with chronicling the few days on the gold coast, but oh well. i kinda reached a point of jaded-ness. what's the point of trying to remember every single little small thing anyway? life in that world is over. it's time to put it behind. so yeah. i don't know if the mood will ever come for me to finish up blogging about the last week. and i guess i don't regret being so over-emotional and sad in that last week. perhaps i was that sad then because i know, soon, i'd move into this phase. a phase where everybody, slowly but surely, begins to move on.

it's time to refer people back to my normal (singapore) blog because i referred people here when i was in australia. so ha, no surprises here. back to justabagatelle.livejournal.com if you're interested to know my (often) less than enthusiastic muses about life.

goodbye australia. honestly, it's about time.

11 may night -- the night reality TV came true Pt 4

ok there is part 4 but i am exhausted. and part 4 is gonna be pretty short and relatively inconsequential.
so tmr.

11 may night -- the night reality TV came true Pt 3

bah it is 3 am and i am still typing part 3. as i said, this would be a very very tiring entry because so many things went wrong in that short span of one night. gah. tired.

ok from now on, all the times are vague guesses, because i was too busy being very super stressed out, and there are no more smses to show me timings anymore, so yes.

~~20:30--
zhujun finished with her coke chicken which tasted good to her immense relief, and so she transferred it to a serving dish which was more like a plastic container thingy. and den i had to wash the pot..which had like remains of maillard reaction stuck to the bottom of the pot and was really hard to scrub with the meagre amount of detergent we had in plastic sachets provided by the apartment. yah and i was happily (ok not happily, stressily) scrubbing scrubbing scrubbing for the next 5-10 mins and hoping for dear life the sticky stains would go off quickly and i could cook the fish.. when zj's phone rang and we were like OH SHIT.

status update:
--coke chicken ready.
--mushrooms prepared and ready to go into the oven
--cabbages still sitting in some other bowl waiting to be fried
--fish and ingredients reqd for fish prepared but not cooked yet
--eggs and tomatoes prepared and waiting to be fried.
--tiny pot still sitting there and looking clean and pretty.

zj answered, spoke to him for a bit, and held the phone up to my ear with my hands still suddy. i tink the pot was nearly done then alr.. so i think irene took over the cleaning and finished it up. yep so wayne and nathan were already downstairs. obviously, we were less than 50% ready. and wayne asked me if i could look for a corkscrew because he had a bottle of wine but he didn't bring something to open it with. and to their surprise (and not to ours as we'd already experienced first hand the paltry state of the kitchen that we had to work with) there wasn't a corkscrew. anw i told them we were totally NOT READY yet. so they said they'll go into surfers to try to buy a corkscrew, and buy nathan a non-alcoholic drink. haha.

i had to go down and let them into the garage, so i was like ahh zj since u know how to cook the fish can you start on it first.. so i went and let them in. and i hopped into the car..and at the gate u had to like press the sensor to the gate-opener..and they had to wind down the window to do that..i was gonna stretch my hand out of the window when wayne wound up the window again. and i'm like okay here we go again some things don't change. first thing u do when u time with the two of them laughing and snickering..like i stick out my hand and then the window starts going up and i was like nearly going to strangle him already when he finally let me open the gate :| and so i let them exit to go on their little surfers rendevous and plunged myself back into the warzone.

PROBLEM 11: zj was cooking the fish..and she was trying to flip it but it broke apart..fish being flaky and fragile...so i took over the fish..and she started on the egg and tomatoes.. for my fish.. i had to cook it in 3 batches..cos the pieces were big..and in the end.. due to the very unsuccessful attempts of trying to keep the fillets in one piece.. i decided ahh forget it they don't need to know that it was supposed to be in one piece! so i just 'chopped' everything up so it became like fish slices in citrus sauce. the sauce turned out alright, but when i tastd the fish i was like awwww crap this fish is super fishy. so the meat was like no good :(

PROBLEM 12: i was trying to put in some pepper (from a plastic bag) onto the fish..when i suddenly lost control and a whole PILE of black pepper went onto the fish and i was like ahhh oh shit oh shit oh shitttttt. we managed to scoop most of the pile up and save the situation tho.

PROBLEM 13: zj was having a lot of trouble trying to fry her tomatoes and egg in the tiny pot. and she said she never fried it so ugly-ly before and she was quite traumatized. irene was also quite appalled that we were gonna be serving food in this kind of state to guests. and yes of cos, by then my 'perfect idea' thing was totally gone and i was highly regretting ever suggesting this..but it was too late. things never do turn out the way they seem eh.

PROBLEM 14: in the meantime, we told weibin (i think it was weibin if i am not wrong) to cook the rice..so he tried cooking one packet...but for some reason, it came out hard and gross and we were like D: and so we tried to salvage that packet of rice..that was because the pro rice cooker hl was sick and resting :(

PROBLEM 15: i put my mushrooms into the oven.. and when they came out, they didn't look like what it was originally supposed to look like.. and it was rather ugly.cos the cheese didn't brown well and it was just a weird colour after it melted. so it was probably the oven's problem, or the cheese, tho i specified a brand there for them to buy..they mixed it up with my instructions for the rest of the ingredients, which was to buy the cheapest..so they bought the cheapest packet of cheese.

and then after everything was done, we had the veggies to fry still. weibin bravely took up the endeavour. we had like damn alot of cabbage, and that tiny pot. so he had to fry the cabbage in 3 batches in that tiny pot, which was highly challenging.

and hl had gotten up at the end..and she was helping to prepare the rice..i think the later 2 containers of rice were not too bad haha. long live the pro rice cooker.

by then, wayne and nathan were back and came up to the apartment..everyone said hi to everyone.. and i locked them out in the balcony briefly....and then we served up the unappetizing looking food, had a bit of a panic because

PROBLEM 16: we thought they didn't have glasses and wine glasses as well..but found them in a top cupboard eventually..and

PROBLEM 17: there were 7 of us, but only 6 chairs. a bit of a musical chair dilemma eh. so in the end we put like 2 chairs together and 3 of us sat on one chair and poor irene who was sandwiched in the centre next to a right hander and a left hander on the wrong sides had VERY little space to eat.

yup so finally at like hrmm.. what 9:45?

we finally settled down to dinner. i remember wayne making a short little toast at the start to thank us for the dinner and i tink all of us were really paiseh for the state of the food we were serving him and nathan..me and zj especially i think. and i think we were joking about masterchef or judging or critquing the food or something like that..and he went.. well u guys already get full marks. for the effort. and when i heard that i felt even more bad because they'd have to tahan crappy food at this time of the night where they'd be absolutely starving..and still say such nice things to us.

11 may night -- the night reality TV came true Pt 2

continued from part 1:

oh yes. forgot to say. the original invitation told them to come at 8pm.

19.10--we got to surfers at about this time. last hugs to aunt suvy who was always so nice going out of the way sending us here and there. and then zj and i brought our luggage up first. and i came back down, and got a bit worried as the other 3 weren't back yet, and it looked like a storm was brewing. well within a minute, their silhouettes appeared, all of them carryig huge plastic bags of stuff. i felt really bad because of the key issue, and making them buy and carry all this barang and have to rot at the supermarket area. so i'd say that

PROBLEM 6: we had 3 especially disgruntled friends who were already not in the best physical and mental state from dreamworld earlier that day, and moods probably exacerbated by this whole grocery saga.

and furthermore

PROBLEM 7: hui ling was really sick, she was feverish and all, and at first she was trying to help..but she looked really bad..so we told her to go and slp, and that we'd handle the cooking and all.

yes, all this and we hadn't even started cooking yet.

19:20---i had a sms come in from wayne (which came in at 19:08, just that i read it only like 15 mins later) which was:

LIFESAVER 1 (probably the one and only, really): he was still at work at the time he sent the message so he'd definitely be late, cause he needed to get home and get changed and then pick nathan then come into surfers. so that bought us more time.

so when i got to the apartment with them..we were checking out the cutlery and plates and etc etc. and they definitely needed a wash. and we were like ahh where's the detergent...we had to wash down all our crockery and cutlery before starting on anything.

in the meantime, i had to go get the stuff i needed to get. the 3 of em told me that they only bought 1 packet of microwaveable rice..and it didn't look enough because it didn't look like the kind in US which expanded. so they told me to get more. so i walked briskly down to coles this time..and thankfully it was still open. first thing i did was to go look for the mushrooms.

PROBLEM 8: i think i had to get like 12 mushroom caps, and at the end of the day, all the mushrooms there were like bruised and battered and cui. and i was like struggling so hard to find 12 proper looking not-too-ugly mushrooms.

and for the fish, there weren't many options too, and so i got the nicest looking affordable fish fillets --which were the hake fillets.

so i paid up and left. and guess what?

PROBLEM 9: scatterbrained me forgot all about buying the rice till i got back to the apartment and was like OH CRAP.

19:54--walking back from coles, at the bottom of the apartment, received a message from wayne saying that he was gonna be leaving his house and would be there in 45 mins. essentially, we therefore only had 45 mins left to finish up everything. and i hadn't even started on either of my dishes yet.

when i got back to the apartment, zj was lamenting terribly. and she had good reason to lament.

PROBLEM 10: we only had 2 pots. 1 pot was a pot with a relatively large circumference, but NO COVER. the other pot was absolutely TINY. and we were having major logistical difficulties, with not enough big plates and bowls to put our large quantities of raw material. that night, our 'menu' was

coke chicken, citrus fish, fried veggie (which was cabbage in the end because that's what they bought), baked mushrooms with cheese, and fried egg with tomato. so the status right then was ..

--coke chicken cooking in big pot with plate as cover.
--no place to put cabbages, so all in aluminium trays supposed to be for mushrooms.
--mushrooms untouched
--egg being beaten and tomatoes being cut.
--tiny pot not in use yet.

and,

--40 minutes left to finish everything.

so i found out about the rice, and weibin decided to go buy more rice.

and i got started with the mushrooms, because the big pot was then in use and i couldn't do anything to the fish. and irene told me to tell her what to do, so i could go start working on the fish. so irene officially took over the mushroom dish.

11 may night -- the night reality TV came true Pt 1

ok i have been delaying writing this for the longest time and i decided if i dun hurry up finish blogging aust, i will have europe and china coming up and this will slowly fade away in my memories.

this is because this night was so eventful with so many things happening, plus no photos at all, it is gonna be pretty hard trying to dig up my memories of everything including timelines and all that i shd be rather drained of energy by the time i'm done with this.

ok so basically, when i planned gold coast, i planned for all of us to be staying in an apartment complete with kitchen and all, like our own little home for 4 days. so i wanted to like try cooking in aust, making our own dinner. and then at the same time i thought, why not merge this idea with another? to thank wayne we could invite him over and cook dinner for him. and this way my good friends in singapore could meet my good friend in aust and vice versa and have a nice enjoyable night. perfect idea right?

NOT.

the night turned out to be entirely nightmarish. problems after problems cropped, making this feel like reality tv (like masterchef or something) come true, 10 times magnified, given the enormous number of screwups and obstacles we had that night.

before starting on the nightmarish night, we eventually decided to invite nathan too , because it was zhujun's last night on the coast so she could see him one last time as well. and well that's probably like problem 0, because nathan eats like a cow. lol.

so now, to start from the start,

4:45 pm--we were at dreamworld, and we left at about this time. we were to split up, me and zj to collect our luggage from aunt suvy's place, and the other 3 to head straight to surfers to start buying groceries first (we prepared a list for them already). i had all the bus timings checked out and in the google spreadsheet beforehand, so that we wouldn't reach aunt suvy's house too late. but:

PROBLEM 1: we did not have excel spreadsheet in hard copy on us, so no bus timings to guide us, ended up taking a later bus.

and

PROBLEM 2: the only key to the apartment was with me. (we asked for 2 keys, but they only handed us one that morning cos i think room service held the other, and they said they would leave the other key for us in the apartment.) so if the 3 of them finished buying groceries, they could not go back to the apartment until i got there.

5:50--we reached the bus stop that was nearest to our place finally. nearest to our place, but still super far. it was already dark then, and the darkness seemed like it was pressing down on us..giving a greater sense of urgency. we were like walking super super quickly to achieve reaching the house at 6pm, but it was a really long distance away..

well, one thing we discovered on our way home, was that in the 2 weeks we were gone, a proper footpath was created from the bus stop to our house! in the past, we had to walk along the road, or on a dirt path. well at least we got to walk on it for one time. ha.

6:10--finally, after lots of super rapid briskwalking and panting and breathlessness, we got to the house. when we got there, we discovered

PROBLEM 3: that uncle gary wasn't home yet! ta-dah. and we needed him to be home, because aunt suvy needed his car to fetch us to surfers. and she was asking us to stay for dinner and all, and asking us to eat bobochacha that she'd made.. and we felt too paiseh to decline..and she even called uncle gary to come back immediately after we explained our time-pressed situation to her..and we felt rather bad about that..

she was like aiyoh..why must cook..don't cook lah just order pizza...and seriously right that moment i was like thinking maybe that is really a better option, the only problem being that our friends were already grocery shopping, and that kinda burst my 'perfect idea' bubble. we had to pack all our remaining barang, and also pack some condiments in plastic bags.. because it wouldn't be economical to buy whole bottles of seasonings and condiments to cook for that one night. so we had like oyster sauce, sugar, dark soy sauce, salt, pepper, u name it in plastic bags and containers. we were pretty much done by 6:40, but uncle gary wasn't back yet. so i sent a sms to wayne and told him the situation.

6:50 pm. Uncle gary arrived..and we were finally set to leave. last goodbyes to linnett and uncle gary (aunty suvy was sending us), and we were on our way. i recieved a call from weibin then. they were done with grocery shopping at woolies, but we were a good half hour away from surfers still so they would have to rot at the supermarket. and then came

PROBLEM 4: there wasn't any fish that i wanted, and there were only barrumundi left, which were really expensive.

PROBLEM 5: they didn't know which mushrooms to buy, and even tho i tried describing it to them, they didn't get it, or perhaps there wasn't that type of mushrooms there.

both of them were my dishes and i was like oh crap. so in the end the conclusion was that everyone head back to the apartment first, and zj would start cooking first, while i go down to the supermarket myself to buy the remaining stuff.

dreamworld 11 may

okays.. i am not in the best of moods now with the recent spate of events. lol 1) having had only 3 hours of sleep the previous night, because of a) wake b) unforseen conversation c) digging up stuff for ling 2) the fact that it sucks having to travel alone again, with even more uncertainties this time, and 3) having my insecurities and paranoia eating away at me again, kinda makes me glad that i'm about to finish uploading these photos and finish up blogging this phase of my life soon.

but anyway, the mood now probably coincides a little with the mood i felt on 11 may. 11 may was a rather down day for me. aside from that little out-of-the-world farm stay experience, 11 may would be kinda like the official start of the gold coast travelling, the program i planned with all my heart and put in lots of effort for with the hope that my good friends would love the gold coast just as much as i did. but well, i can understand being them, and having experienced melb and syd, gold coast really would seem like nothing. i was pretty upset when one of them complained of the scorching heat in the coast and went 'gold coast is my least favourite city!' like ouch. haha. even before anything started, the coast was condemned. lol.

perhaps what made things worse, was that everyone was pretty under the weather that day, perhaps from the late night out the previous night stargazing, as well as the cold on the farm that night. everyone just felt like nua-ing around, totally not in the mood for a theme park.

hrmm. 1) we intended to go to white water world that day, but when we got to the apartment, our apartment wasn't ready for us yet, so we couldn't settle down, so it was difficult to pack stuff for water theme park, so that was out. 2) neither tracey or lorna could join us that day like they said they would, cause of an audit that happened at work.

so yeah everyone half-heartedly went to dreamworld and took a few mild rides..and then i suggested reefdiver cause linnett told me before that it was good even tho few people went on it. BIG mistake as it turned out. both ling and irene were really really really really giddy and nauseous after that and ling's condition took a turn for the worse. she kinda had a fever after dreamworld.

hrmm ...log ride was funny cos irene and i (in one log) were like nearly dry and the other 3, in the other log, were like realllyy wet. haha. we were saying it was all wb's fault lol. and tower of terror was super fast but absolutely awesome. claw was good, surfrider was good too. revisiting childhood wise, vintage cars!!!!!! still there after 16 years (First time i went there i was 6) and finally i get to carry my own koala hahaha. i was super bummed at age 8 to not be able to carry it and i still remember it clearly till today.

dreamworld vs movie world. i thought i'd like dreamworld more..cause everyone kept saying it was really fun and there were more rides and it was like bigger (in terms of visitable theme park area) but i realized that day (un-theme parkish atmosphere amongst us 5 aside) that i honestly liked movie world better and was glad i got the endless summer pass for movie world and wet and wild, which are, in conclusion, my 2 favourite parks of em all. :)