A closure

Sorry for not updating much. Was super busy with the post-placement assignment rushing and the cultural concert/play that took place last Saturday. And try slotting in shopping for souvenirs, sending cards and packing in between.

Anyway, I'm just glad that those 2 big stuff are all over.

The placement was great overall and I did the best I could with my written case study. :) All that's left is my next placement in Pt Pirie starting in June.

About the cultural concert, it was a SUCCESS!!! Woohoo!! The shadow scene was successful, and the audience were generally impressed and happy with our play. I'm glad everything went great, and even the 'unexpected events' during the play added to the dramatic effects. XD (Like the apple dropping during the 'awe' scene, and the tree falling off during the Mara scene.)


Anyways, it's all good. And here I am sitting on the couch, typing away on my laptop, which is conveniently parked in front of the huge flat screen TV in my house in Malaysia. Still need some time getting used to the huge screen, after spending so long in Adelaide with that small idiot box.

With good food, shopping, shopping and more shopping, what could one possibly hope for more eh? But I digress. I'm now in the middle of 'emo-ing'. *sighs*


I think most of my close friends would know what I'm talking about. Yes yes, it's about a guy.
Should I give him up? Should I keep hanging on? Deep in my heart, I know that option 1 is for the best, but somehow, I just hope that it will be different.. somehow.. (which is kinda impossible for us, at this point of our lives.. I think..)

*sighs*
I need to bring this to a closure. He's possibly stalking my fb (or cookies forbid, this very post on my blog), or waiting for a new message from me, but I can't do it. I can't let this drag on anymore and cause my heart to break any further. On one hand, I would appreciate it if he would be honest and tell me that we (or more precisely, I) should put a stop on this never-ending roundabout. But on the other, I would totally shatter into pieces if he said so.

Guess I'll just let time deal with it. I'm sure that I am strong enough for this. :)

CNY in Adelaide

So.. it was my first time spending Chinese New Year in Adelaide. Previously, all my CNY in Malaysia were typically spent by sitting at the back of the car for 5 hours or so while my dad drives us to either Malacca or Singapore, or both, to visit our relatives. And at the end of the day, I would come out of the car with a sore back and butt.


Anyway, this year was different. As I was pondering how the CNY celebrations would be like in Adelaide, I found myself at the SA Zhu-Lin Buddhist Association. Let's just say it was a totally different experience.

Since me and my friends volunteered to be ushers for the celebration, we basically had to ask people to not move out of the ropes area. Doing this, it could only lead to a few possible outcomes:
1) "Oops, sorry!" *moves back into the audience area*
2) *silently shuffles back into the audience area*
3) *glares and moves back into the audience area*
4) *pretends not to hear* *Rei asks again* *shoots dirty look and moves back into audience area*
5) And this one was the icing on the cake. Some temple aunties who always helped out in the kitchen: *becomes very angry and raises voice* "I'M ONLY OUT HERE FOR A WHILE AND THEN I'LL GO BACK TO THE KITCHEN! EVERY YEAR I DON'T GET THE CHANCE TO SEE THE CELEBRATION AND THIS YEAR I MANAGED TO COME OUT FOR A WHILE!" *Rei becomes curious and asks if they were cooking behind since there weren't any cooking going on that evening* *starts making lame excuses about preparing drinks for VIPs and then grumbles to each other and to the audience*
Even though none of the VIP had drinks, or had anyone offer them anything through out the whole celebration. Oh and the aunties stood there till the end of the celebration btw.
- At the end of number 5, the audience started to move towards the VIP area since the aunties were standing there.

And this was what I did:
1) Asks audience nicely to move out of VIP area back to the audience area
2) Lather, rinse, repeat.
3) Until it became really uncontrollable due to the crowd seeing the aunties and the "Public relations" people (who did nothing at all, except of course,) standing at the VIP area, therefore causing the crowd to move in there, thinking it was okay to stand in there.
4) And then I gave up. When I asked people to move, they did. And 5 seconds later, more people went over to the VIP area.
In the end, I was drained at had a -_- whatever! look.


All in all, it was a great experience. I didn't know that there were so many Asians in Adelaide who would get themselves all the way to the temple.
Basically, the whole celebration consisted of singing from 贵英姐, followed by some dances from the Rushi Children group. The Kungfu masters had their debut next, and then came the lion and dragon dances. (Oh and apparently, a perverted aunty was touching the butts of all dancers of the lion dance, and at the 4th lion, she actually smacked the butt of the back dancer. The poor guy..)
At the strike of 12, there was a display of fireworks, and then the thousand-odd public rushed to do their blessings.

This in turn, brought about another hillarious turn of events:
1) Many many many many many people praying and getting bunches of incense.
- Rei's inner voice: Seriously, why does just one person have to get a bunch of 30 or so?!
2) Too many incense in the incense pot.
3) Smoke everywhere. Suddenly incense starts burning and a small fire breaks out.
4) Rei sees people crowding, including a guy friend standing there not knowing what to do. There was a fire extinguisher next to the big incense pot.
Friend: "How?! I don't know how to use a fire extinguisher!!" (originally said in Chinese, translated to English by me.)
5) Rei rushes to the rescue! Or not! She carries the fire extinguisher and tries to find the pin. Until she was stopped by someone who said not to use the extinguisher as the fire is small and would be contained by itself.
- Seriously. The friend who didn't know how to use the extinguisher was too funny. He ended up becoming the joke of the night!


Another hillarious thing that happened:
1) There was a 2nd lion dance after 12, unrelated to the aforementioned troup that had their butts molested.
2) Lion goes into the temple and dances inside the main hall area.
3) Meanwhile, all volunteers gathers at the rendezvous area, taking pictures.
4) While getting ready for a group pic, lion suddenly comes out of no where, blocking the camera.
- Rei's inner voice: Those cam-whores! XD
5) *Lion suddenly approaches Rei* *Rei steps back* *Lion continues charging towards Rei and pushes her back* *Rei starts to get a bit panicky and shuffles towards the back, making some weird noises in the process* *Lion finally gives up*
XDDDDDDDDD


That was definitely one heck of a CNY celebration that I would never ever forget! XD

A brief description

This post is just a brief description of me and the sites that I linked to.
On the right hand corner of the blog, you'll be able to find my 好きなリンクス, aka my favourite links. These are the sites that I can't live without.


Part 1: 料理 Food.
I have always been a fan of food, be it cooking and baking from scratch, instant cooking as I like to call it (cooking food in the shortest amount of time), or eating.
My favourite type of food (to both make and eat) is dessert! 甘いだから！Both me and the dessert! Lolz..
Apart from dessert, I like to cook 日本料理 Japanese Cuisine.
This brings us to the first 2 links on the food column.

Just Hungry and Just Bento:
- These are the sites that I swear upon! I can't live without them! I have no idea how I lived my life before I found Maki's blogs on food.
- Maki is a Japanese expatriate, currently living in Switzerland. She currently blogs on her 2 sites, Just Hungry and Just Bento.
- Just Hungry is a site with recipes for various food, but more specifically 日本料理. Here, she teaches from the very beginning, so you can learn everything from scratch. Just Bento, on the other hand, focuses more on bento making. Here, you can find recipes that are easy and simple to make for bento purposes, as well as tips on how to make good bento, チャラ弁 Charaben making, bento supplies as well as how to manage your time to make bento lunches.
- Most of her recipes are easy to follow and are quite simple to make. There are also more challenging recipes that you can try out if you feel the need to challenge your cooking skills (eg. カステラ Casutella, Mayonnaise, and even 梅干 Umeboshi!)

All recipes:
- I use this site mainly to find recipes for desserts, such as cupcakes, muffins, dolce (cakes) and the like.
- There are many good recipes but do make sure to look out for the credibility of the recipes by reading user comments. Good recipes tend to have higher ratings and more comments on it.


Part 2: 音楽 Music
I mainly listen to pop and rock, and some Japanese songs as well. A site that offers downloads for anime music is Gendou. I usually get my Japanese songs from there, if they're anime in origin.


Part 3: アニメと漫画 Anime and Manga
The sites listed here are sites related to anime and manga. I don't think I need to explain all of them as I've already written some details after the sites, so the rest are up to you to explore. ;)


Part 4: その他の Others
I don't think I need to explain much about this part as well as they're either self-explanatory or that they're famous enough for me to explain. :p


So yeah, that's about it. I know that I've written "A brief description" as the title but it doesn't really feel brief anymore ね? :p
I'll just leave my post at here and let you guys do the exploring! :)