yet another semester has gone by in Melbourne! how time flies!

3 years of medical school is officially over and i'm at the halfway mark!

before i boarded the plane for singapore, as usual, i sat in the departure lounge...staring out at the tarmac....yet another lazy afternoon in melbourne. i enojoyed just sitting and watching the guys gas up the plane and load the last of the baggage onto the 747-400 megatop.

its been a great semester. it kicked off with me arriving back late in melbourne, due to my voluntary attendence at World Glaucoma Congress. i did so, being the diligent and aspiring opthlmologist of course. (excuse to slack longer in singapore!)

lab work got off to a slow start. i was mainly reading journal articles at first. thankfully, nicole, the lab assistant, was very helpful in running me through the basics of lab work and the basic protocols to be adhered to in the lab.

there were days in the lab when i got out of bed thinking to myself: why in the world did i choose this boring unit for AMS? shouldn't i have just gone off to some 3rd world country to investigate HIV or sth like that?

too late for regrets...lolz.

then of course came the jap exchange program hosted by the japanese club of unimelb. wonder why i went for it anyway.....oh well...a leopard never changes its spots! haha!
but it got me all fired up and i suddenly had this new found fervour to learn jap language...instead of just speaking a spattering of it. those times i spent trying out jap class, was , in a sense, a waste of time as it turned out to be a 5 minute interest.phantom of the opera, was, of course...awesome. the company was too. xy took me to a nice korean joint in clayton for dinner before that. and i guess we had such a good time that we were late for the performance! squeezing through the people to get to my seat just reminded me about how i have not quite arrived yet in terms of social grace.

spent a bomb on taxi fare to get back from clayton and in retrospect, i wonder why i did such silly things anyway.

the boredom soon led to a period where clubbing took place almost every week! BLVD, club 7, it was our regular hangout for a while. the first night at 7s was the worse.....the sheer amount of alcohol in my blood just made me feel like i was going to die! never felt so horrible in my life! clubbing should be a fun thing, not a torture. oh well...i guess part of the fun is in being uninhibited and doing stupid stuff in the club.

distinguished business leader series.... it was inspiring listening to a self made millionaire's story from rags to riches. the high commissioner didn't seem as friendly when i approached him compared to previous occassions. i guess that just reminds me that in singaporean society....there is a certain culture of upward deferrence. that one of lower standing should not be too bold in approaching someone of status, even if that is considered to be acceptable in a western society. furthermore, my question was a rather inconvenient one....and i guess the allegations in the aussie newspapers are not entirely true or entirely false, and it would put a senior civil servant on the defensive.

met a nice girls from RMIT. she looked pretty attractive from afar... didn't have much of a conversation with her but i got invited to RMIT's durian party.

taiwan cocktail party.... not too bad...actually got ming in for free... that's when we first got to know cc....and subsequently sy. can't believe i actually pulled off that conversation in canto! i was just hanging out in there for dear life! (and face!)

oh well...it wasn't too bad...her 21st bday celebration was a nice and cosy event. had an interesting conversation with sherry...this girl from wuhan...and of course, later got to know sy better at the karaoke session.

french dinner...ming was so kind as to lend me his car...u know me...being so sick and tired of taking the trams. i wanted to up my game for once. c'est bon. thats the name of the restaurant in port melbourne. $40 pre fix menu. it was not a bad deal, honestly! but i just somehow found that it was an overkill. no point offering such sophisticated stuff to a simple person who can't appreciate it. she was really happy though...i guess. though the conversation centred around some strange things...and i felt like my intellect wasn't running at full capacity...and i wasn't being intellectually challenged or stimulated. couldn't belive i was talking about such crap.

subsequent dinner....dinner at Halah....(yea...haha...the name...) korean food was great...but conversation was crap. can't believe someone would actually talk on the phone for 5 mins in front of someone else.

dinner at spicy sichuan place...even worse...ordered too much...had a minor quarrel while crossing the road even. but it all went down well that evening.

test driving cars! that has got to be a new and exciting experience for me. we are not talking about glitzy showrooms with nice friendly sales people here. we are talking about meeting a complete stranger and getting into a car with them.

the vietnamese dude didn't give me a good feeling though i felt that his car was really nice to drive. bree, the aussie hottie...oh well....nice number, but would u want sth with no power steering? the old lady in belgrave....most ulu place in melb!!! again no power steering..but car in great shape! jess from frankston...the moment i tested it...i knew i had to have it! it was the complete package! and sth in me just told me"this is THE ONE!"

"the one" hmm....that's how it should feel like i guess.

i was impressed by the generosity and trust showed by the australian when she accepted a $20 deposit for a $7000 car.

taking delivery of it...oh well... awesome experience! i felt so liberated! just kept driving and driving till i came to the beach. and didn't know where i was! haha .uncle dominic and dad did come in the earlier part of the semester. it was great to have arespite from lab and come out to meet them. nice when people visit. u get to eat good stuff that u don't normally eat on ur own.

ming's bday was an absolute smash! the stripper was....oh well, not exactly drop dead gorgeous....but that just shows how deceptive these online sites are.