Gaah.

I am feeling super sien-ed. So not in the mood to study. Sigh. Even looking at that piece of paper with the funny lines and squiggly things on it makes me want to groan and just climb into bed and bury myself under the covers.

School starts on Monday. My exam's on Monday.

Summer flew. Literally. Today is the coldest day yet since I came back - Autumn's certainly not delaying her arrival.

The Degraves household is complete again! Lydia came back yesterday, and the four of us, together with Dawn, went for the final night market of the summer at Victoria Market. Today we re-arranged the living room, to give it a different sort of feel, after a year of the same layout. I'd like to rearrange my bedroom as well, but I can't see how.

I realize I've never posted up pictures of the apartment nor my bedroom. An idea for a future post, I suppose, especially if I don't know what to blog about. (Another realization: I'm still very much wary about blogging personal things, hence I try to keep most of my posts general and non-specific.)

Hmm.

This blog needs something newwww. Does ANYONE want to co-blog with me? SERIOUSLY.

Musicals, operas, concerts!

Listening to the Phantom of the Opera original London cast recording never fails to move me. I am brought back to the theatre once again; the feeling of sitting there at Princess Theatre and watching the story unfold before my eyes, and the beautiful, soaring music soar through the air - it's magical. If there's a next time, I'd definitely go again.

I bought the poster last year when we went to watch. Beside it (in the picture) is the Josh Groban poster I bought when I went for his concert last October - which was really good, too! At the end of it, I managed to find the back door and got his autograph!! (Along with other fans who managed to find the stage door as well Haha.) A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, probably. Anyway it was so cool to have been this close to him.

Wicked is opening at Regent Theatre in Melbourne this year, and there's no way I'm missing that! Guys and Dolls is going to open soon at Princess Theatre as well, but I've yet to decide if I want to go for it, too. Both are critically acclaimed and award-winning musicals. There's too many things happening! A few notable operas are being performed by Opera Australia this year as well - Bizet's Carmen, and Puccini's Madama Butterfly. I want to go for everything! I need MONEY.

Whyyyy do I love the theatre and arts?? And why are all my hobbies and interests such high-maintenance ones anyway! Books and CDs, rather than clothes and accessories, suck my bank account dry instead. I need to ... control. But these things aren't there forever. You'd never know when you get another chance to watch that particular musical in the theatre or the opera being staged, or that particular artist hold a concert.

Sighhh...!

And in a blink of an eye...

Where did all the days go...?

Of everything and everything

You can't miss that which you never had or experienced. But you can yearn for it.


When rules are made to broken. We were studying the structure of fugues in class today, and I have an excellent lecturer who does such a good job of explaining, that what may appear difficult will made you go, "Ohhhh" with understanding in an instant. And once we got pass the general overview of fugues, he went on to mention all these "exceptions" where the rules of fugue writing may not necessarily apply. And that got me thinking. Aesthetics may take a precedence over strict counterpoint writing sometimes; it's up to you to discern whether it should be this or that way. But that line, that boundary laid down by those rules... sometimes, breaking the rule does not have to sound as bad. What if it's necessary.


It's funny how a single piece of information can instantly change your mood in less than a second. To be feeling contented and at peace one second, and the next you are upset and irrationally angry.


Hopes and dreams which can daunt you or urge you ahead. What may seem impossible does not have to be impossible.


If I had a penny for every regret professed on this earth, I'd probably be a millionaire many times over.


The desire to be heard and to simply speak out, but pride and dignity gets in the way and you remain in the silence of your world.


Faces on the street you pass. Sometimes I wonder about the person behind you, who is talking on your cell; you, who looks so tired; you, busy and caught up in your own world. We're all passing faces in a sea of egocentric individuals.


When you get past a certain point, and you look back and am amazed at how far you have come. Not in terms of achievement, but in the person. The "me" now and then, two vastly different people, characters which may be hard to reconcile.






And of course I know what day it is today. Happy Valentine's Day to all out there! It just feels like any other day to me; apart from the occasional adverts and red decorations on businesses cashing in on one of the most lucrative days of the year. Call me blur (okay, fine, I am blur), but the realization that almost all the coursemates I hang out with are attached, was one which dawned upon me and a fellow unattached friend a few weeks back. (And she pointed it out first, btw. I'm not desperate or searching at all, thank you very much. Lol.)

After class today, Alamby gave out beautifully wrapped small packages of chocolate to everyone. That was really sweet of her; she said that her mom helped her the night before. Lol. She had a bagful of chocolates with her.

There you go, my only valentine ;p (she's in the 'attached' crowd, fyi).


Anyway a few friends have planned (yet another) game night tonight - the so-called "Lonely Hearts" Club. Hahaha. I've been introduced to all these new games in the past year or so, and they're all awesome, award-winning games. Try out Super Munchkin if you can get your hands on the game - a wicked, scheming game which encourages cheating, hehe. Extremely fun.

Articulate, Taboo, Pictionary - classic games, still fun, but can feel quite old after awhile. Bang! is a fun diversion should one feel the need to rest the intellect. For serious scheming, Citadels will not disappoint. Settlers is another one I tried out last year, requires a lot of thinking as well, but haven't played it enough to get a real feel of it. Another game along the lines of Citadels and Settlers (city-building and stuff) is the cute Carcassone, which is very fun as well. I hope we get to try out Ticket to Ride later on - another interesting game which we haven't tried out yet, but has been lying around.


(Well, this is a change - I think I had a post where I was raving about RPG games about two years back. Now I'm this seemingly geeky persona who enjoys "intellectual" games. =P)

Welcoming the Year of the Rat

Happy Chinese New Year!


CNY reunion dinner was held at Sun Sun's place with a group of friends from OCF, so it was a really great night. Come to think of it, this is my second time away from home for CNY... the first time was when I first went over to Perth. My homestay parents had plans for the night (no, I obviously wasn't invited), and I was looking into spending a lonely night by myself, if it weren't for church friends who called me and asked if I wanted to go over to their place for dinner. In retrospect, it's quite miserable to imagine that I would have been all alone on what is considered an important tradition, especially for us Chinese... So this year, it was nice to spend CNY reunion dinner with friends, who really are our family overseas..

It was a potluck dinner, and the food was marvelous (undoubtedly, hehe). After a hearty and satisfying dinner, we played Articulate (which my team won, yay!) and then a round of Bang! which took quite awhile for the uninitiated to learn, but a really entertaining game once you get the hang of it. Sun Sun decorated her apartment with a bit of CNY decorations, which looked really nice, and she even bought one of those CNY karaoke DVDs, so we had to 'endure' the whole "dong dong qiang which I came back early to escape" (in Kingsley's words), the atmosphere certainly felt quite CNY-ish. Lol. One thing I do miss, though, was tossing the yu sheng, which was something my siblings and I use to laugh and enjoy over, as we try to outdo each other in seeing who tossed the highest.

The family (with the exception of Charles and I) went back to Ipoh a few days ago... my mom called me from my grandfather's place Wednesday night, after I reached home, and it was great just talking to my mom, but after I hung up, a yearning for home and just hearing her voice made me wish that I was with them... The parents are staying with my grandfather, and the younger two siblings decided to stay at my uncle's place... I wasn't too surprised to hear that. Haha. My mom told me that my grandfather (whom we call Ye Ye in the Cantonese dialect) can't walk anymore, since his legs are quite weak now... it's been a few years now since I've seen my relatives back in Ipoh. Xiao Ku (my father's youngest sister) visits Ye Ye three times a day to deliver meals... come to think of it, I haven't gone back to Ipoh since my grandmother's funeral..

But anyway, I'm thinking too much again. It's certainly different spending CNY away from home.. Being in a foreign land and all, the festivities are really different. It's not as 'in-your-face' (to put it blatantly) like back home, where a trip out will see you being blasted with noisy CNY music and red decorations everywhere you go. In fact, I'd say that if you weren't aware of it, then you wouldn't know at all.

It's a rather cold week, weather-wise. Not that I'm complaining. Summer's been surprisingly pleasant.



It's already the second month into the new year. How fast time is flying. And this year will already be my third year in uni. And I still have absolutely no freakin' idea about what I want to do after graduation. It should be cause for alarm. But I don't want to think about it yet. I've still got two years to go anyway. This five-year course may seem long, but in a way, I'm almost glad, because it means I don't have to worry... yet. It's scary, too, because if I was doing a straight degree, then I would have been graduating this year. (Okay, that IS scary.)



I really hope you all have a great CNY wherever you are! Miss you guys.

Hmm.

I was organizing my music on iTunes (all part of the process of settling into my Mac), and was doing Queen songs, when I realized that all the Queen songs that I had happened to be composed solely by Freddie Mercury himself.

O_O

I wouldn't call myself a Freddie Mercury fan, although I do greatly admire his talent. But anyway, it felt slightly jarring that I happen to like Mercury-composed Queen songs.

Of picnics and film sets.

The filming right outside is really a first for me. I've never seen a real film set before, nor a live shooting of one, so it's quite interesting. Even as I'm typing this now, I can hear the director's voice (at least, I assume it's the director) shouting, "Action!" over the boomspeaker. Haha. It's interesting to see Flinders St. Station made up to look like 1940s Melbourne.

Went for picnic with Andrea, Adryll, Kingsley and Ian at the Royal Botanic Gardens late this afternoon. Today's weather was absolutely beautiful; 28 degrees, sunny, but not hot. The wind felt refreshingly cool in the sun. Summer has been surprisingly pleasant so far, even though I was told to expect raging heat.

Pictures!

Royal Botanic Gardens, picnic by the lake.


Blueberry cake I baked


A round of Citadels


The set!


The black sheets set up along Flinders Street, blocking access to the set

Couldn't get a clear picture... gaaah blame it on lighting, and I hate using flash if possible... The soldiers are near the tram. Apparently they're using the old, classic Melbourne trams. Looked really cool, with all the vintage cars on the set as well, and the non-soldier actors and actresses dressed up in 1940s fashion.


Another blurred picture. Sien.

Most of my shots came out in a quite 'cannot-make-it' status. But anyway this person here took really good pictures of the set. I should have gone in the morning to take pictures, probably. Lol. While I stood there in the crowd watching, they re-did the same scene three times. Can't be easy to shoot a movie, especially with the big crowds of nosy people clambering to get a good vantage point. (Yes, including yours truly.) The security had to repeatedly tell the crowd, "No flash, please!" when they were about to shoot a scene.

They're packing up tomorrow morning, I think. Now to wait for the series to air next year to catch those scenes I saw this evening. Haha.

A few hundred metres from fame. Lol.

It's funny how pain works - it passes, and you can't seem to recollect that agony you went through; it all seems like a hazy phase. And thinking about pain brought to mind the incident with the ceiling fan. When I think back to it, I couldn't recall any pain, just a film of sped-up memories and the rush to the hospital. But anyway, I woke up today feeling sort of better, although I decided to just have porridge for the unwell stomach. For once, I don't feel like eating anything much... sigh.



Exciting (or not) news: Flinders Street is closed from Russell to Queen Streets, from 10 p.m. tonight until 9 a.m. on Sunday for the filming of Steven Spielberg's The Pacific, which is the sequel to Band of Brothers. The exciting part is that I stay right outside Flinders Street. Lol.

It's quite a major thing for the street to be cordoned off though - Flinders Street is quite a busy one, which will probably be quite an inconvenience to many motorists and pedestrians. And the trams, too. The signs telling people of the closure have been up for a few days now, but I'm sure the general public would know why. I expect many people to probably crowd around the area to catch sight of some of the action going on. And oh no. I hope that it won't be too noisy for the next two days, seeing that it's a war-related drama...

According to this site, people hoping to get a close look at Tom Hanks or Steven Spielberg will be sorely disappointed, as they are not in Australia at the moment. Lol. Well, guess you can't have everything. =P


UPDATE: Okayyy, I just heard REALLY LOUD screaming outside. It's either a bunch of crazy drunk girls, or it's related to the filming. -___-