Was out the whole day ... again.
Friday- paper in the morning finished at 11.50am, dallied (waited for everyone to decide on lunch/dinner plans), ended up going to eat at Nam Loong's (cheap chinese restaurant in chinatown) with see seong, jer fuu, weiming, jiaming, chenyi, sarah, albert. See seong and jer fuu and I all ended up buying the same thing- san1 bao3 fan4. Then albert and i went for exuberant post-exam shopping!!!- hopped down to south melbourne market, shopping (and gawking at things including the aforementioned pigs' ears) It's quite cool! but incomparable to the luxuriously tangible atmosphere of notting hill market and camden market in london (and petticoat lane!) ....

Next destination was brunswick (we bypassed queen vic market, thinking there was no time left, which was a mistake on hindsight) heading for the nut factory. Honey coated Macadamia nuts at cheeeep prices!! But we came 20 minutes after they closed (grumble grumble grumble, not like they couldn't just open the till and let us buy a few bags, they were just lingering around the shop anyways)
Dinner at ormond, and headed down to OCF in union house. After that the bunch of them were going to watch the Korea-Portugal match in town- i headed back to catch up on much-needed sleep in the face of brooding headaches.

Saturday was ... woke up at eight to go marketing with sarah in queen vic. Came back laden with boxes for packing- was thinking of doing some shopping, but with my arms full that was a little inconvenient. It didn't help that it was drizzling. Then chadstone shopping- we finally left city at 12 something, ate at a jap restaurant in chadstone (where this bitchy waitress just *had* to make spiteful comments everytime she walked by- and it was a pretty small place so she walked by quite often) and headed back only at 5+.... Skipped dinner at jiaming's house and the fabulous (or so i heard) england-denmark match thereafter- because i had student service in the kitchen.

When i woke up on sunday i was thinking of giving sarah a call, to find out where their baseball match was so i could go down and watch. Then ... it must have slipped my mind. Or something. Lazed around in ormond (sunday brunch just makes meals such a ... draggy place- in a positive sense- everyone just chats away and talks- whiling away almost 2 hours in the dining hall) Was all dressed up n' ready to go shopping, when it occurred to me that i should call chaowan. He wasn't in. I went down intending to give him another call downstairs-ran into him in the corridor.

We sauntered to queen vic for further shopping (i spotted a cool orange jacket albert would love!! must tell him about it!!), then down to the city, taking the city circle tram. Also hopped over to HMV- i couldn't find the cd my brother wanted me to help him get (it's a bartok piano concerto no. 3, played by some specific pianist he likes)- but i did get 3 classicals for $20- a "juvenile tastes collection" of Peter and the Wolf, Young person's guide to the orchestra and Carnival of Animals (played by philadelphia orchestra- i don't think they're particularly good, victor might sneer at them); a Shostakovich string concertos 7,8,9 (shostakovich!!! my musical obsession!!); and another shostakovich piano concertos and sonata (ditto).

Walked around treasury gardens- it was beautiful. Just as we got into city, this fog started rolling in (yes, rolling in) right around us. Was chilly but worth it to see- or rather- not see- the tops of buildings next to us (and melbourne CBD buildings are pretty short for an urban district).

And attended a catholic student mass in St. Francis' church in the evening. This must be the first catholic service i've attended. It lasted exactly 1 hour and parts of the service were in bahasa indonesia, in deference to the large no. of indonesian students attending that service (hordes of them!!). And i explained to chaowan that people from Philippines don't speak bahasa (as he had assumed native people in south-east asia speak); they speak *pilipino*- most speak fluent Tagalog. Tagalog doesn't even sound like malay.

And had dinner at rose garden- it sells rice plus meat plus veg (optional), or soup noodles, for $5.50 to $6.80. Chaowan referred to the restaurant as "middle-class"- hanging at an intermediate standard, between singapore hawker centres and coffee houses. This is in terms of price/charges and quality of food.

Went to watch waking life on emily's free double pass (thanks emily!!!) with chaowan. I warned him it was an artsy film (asked lots of pple if they wanted to watch, they were either busy with exams or not interested. Arrrrgggghhh i forgot abt asking jiaming and chenyi!!) - he didn't really like it; i was enchanted by it!! Our tastes are ... different. He's looking v. much forward to watching the Mandy Moore vehicle "A time to remember".

Then we went around peeking into other theatres- caught the last 4 minutes of "Italian for beginners" and the last 20 minutes of "The last Kiss", both of which are international films and look Good. And i *happened to procure* a "The importance of being earnest" poster for myself. YaaaayyYy!!!!!!!

William ho recommended i read harold pintler. Or something. He got a knight ship i think. Harold i mean. Not william.