Withdrawal Symptoms!!!

Surprise surprise, another post of complaints.
Perhaps the best adjective to describe the sort of person I am would be "(easily) annoyed". Cos' I am so serious when I say I am annoyed practically ALL the time.

Anyway, on with todays complaint(s).

I am SO SICK of the freaking cold weather here. I mean I know it's nice and like different and not humid and you don't sweat as much and my hair doesn't get frizzy and all that crap, but this cold nonsense is getting old. LIKE SERIOUSLY I thought the weather was supposed to be getting warmer since SPRING IS HERE. Whatever natural phenomenon is causing this coldness needs to get the with program already. There are 4 seasons in a year for all the unfortunate countries located far from the equator, and it's only supposed to be cold for ONE out of the four. And F.Y.I., winter is OVER here in melbourne. And I am SICK of being ambushed by icy gusts of wind in my face while i'm walking to school and having to defrost my toes with the help of an ice pick every night before i go to bed. It is not fun.

It was fun the first 5 weeks i was here, but now it's starting to become ridiculous. How in the WORLD do melbournians bring themselves to bathe in this stupid climate??? And don't tell me they don't have to cos' they don't perspire or get dirty or whatever because that's not true. I mean the part about them not getting dirty. People don't just get dirty by perspiring alright. There's dirt floating around whether you decide to break a sweat or not.

ANYWAY, yes. How, for the love of warmth and toastiness, do they bring themselves to bathe??? I have to believe there's some sort of secret device that's been invented for them to get clean without having to strip down or come into contact with water. Because that's the only way I'D be willing to take regular showers. I mean this is totally serious! It's becoming a problem. Like when night-time comes around and I know I have to bathe soon, I start getting this feeling of dread and suddenly all i want to do is curl up in my bed (which is cold initially but gets warmer thanks to body heat) and hide under the blanket. And like, try to muster enough strength to creep gingerly into the bathroom, brave the cold and take my nightly shower. In fact, I wouldn't even really call it "mustering the strength". It's more like... shutting my eyes really tight and praying that if i wish hard enough, I will be magically cleaned without having to move a muscle. (For the record, I have been showering regularly. It's the singaporean in me that demands daily baths... probably by force of habit.. and need for cleanliness.) And get THIS. The bathroom, right, the toilet... the area of the house in which a person is MOST VULNERABLE... has an open window.

Yes. That's right. You heard me.
There is a window on the wall over the toilet bowl. AND IT IS WIDE OPEN.
The only pathetic thing standing between you, in the toilet, and the outside world and all it's freezing cold elements, is a thin sheet of cloth... apparently tacked over the opening to provide some privacy.
I don't even know why they bothered to put that stupid thing there. IT'S USELESS, PEOPLE. Okay, there might as well be nothing there because guess what??! When the wind blows, that thing FLAPS in the freaking breeze. I mean if you think about it, you might as well be standing butt-naked in the middle of your lawn at night, when the temperature's below 10 degress celsius, holding out a piece of cloth to fight the cold and hide your privates. That's pretty much what it is.
URGH.

This cold weather crap should definitely be confined to holidays and holidays ONLY. I can honestly say that I have never made that big a fuss out of singapores hot weather. In fact, I liked being able to sweat cos' it made me feel like... cleansed inside-out, you know? Here on the other hand.... i mean it's like my sweat pores are dried up. And that's JUST NOT NATURAL.

And another thing. How do all these smug little melbournians EXERCISE??? I see them in their little running tights and caps and nonsense and they are jogging at like 8 freaking am, when the sun's just about out and there's still FROST on the windscreens of cars.

Whatever man. They can do whatever they want I'm just going to sit inside the cafes and sip some hot soymilk until that cut on my finger starts hurting again.

Gosh I'm so thoroughly "vented" that I can't even remember what the second peeve was...
OH RIGHT.
Okay. So you know JY likes to get to school like EXCESSIVELY early in the morning right? Yea. That basically means that if i want to catch a ride from AF to the city in the morning, I have to leave the house at 7 am when my lessons only start at FREAKING NINE. And no, it does not take us two hours to get to the city by car. It's only half a darn hour. So I'm there at 7.30 am. And this wouldn't be so bad.... IF the shops were open and the weather wasnt so @#$%&* cold.
LIKE WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM, SERIOUSLY.
gahh...

this family is nothing like our own.
i can't joke around.

or laugh
mainly because none of them are funny so there's nothing to laugh at anyway.

Like oh my gosh, the other day, sam and yvonne came over to visit and they were kind enough to knock on my room door and ask how i was. And i could totally just be myself around them and we were laughing and talking and stuff and suddenly AF comes out of the kitchen cos' we're making quite a bit of noise, and she's like "oh i hear laughing! i hardly hear gretl laugh." and when she said that i was like... oh man. that's so true i don't laugh around them... like EVER.
HA NO WONDER I'M getting so annoyed at everything these days!!! There's a total lack of funny in this place.

-gretl.

SpeedChat Plus

Hi Cheh(2x),
In Pixie Hollow.com, I requested to use SpeedChat Plus and they have sent a confirmation letter to your e-mail........ could you please accept it? =) Thanks You

Still on holiday...

Here's a picture that will make vegetarians sing and carnivores weep.

That's right. Behold. A cabbage.
A cabbage of mammoth proportions.
The mother of all cabbages!!!
Seriously look at it. And look at the apple on the bottom left corner. I deliberately put that there to show you guys how massive the cabbage was. That's a pretty average sized apple, but it's totally dwarfed by that green ball of fibre. HAHAHA like imagine how overdosed you'd be on vitamin K if you ate the entire head yourself xDD

Seriously though, how in the world do they get their veggies to grow so huge! Is that... normal? I mean look at the freaking pee-wee cabbages we have in the hydroponics farms back home! Those at least look edible. Cos' I dont know about you, but when I buy my food I like to feel like eating it, not feel like it's about to eat me. So yeah. Good on you aussies, you've managed to grow large cruciferous vegetables, but... i'm just not going to touch any of them.

HAHAAH CAN you imagine not having a car and having to lug a bag of those cabbage heads home on the tram? MAN that's hilarious. You'd probably get a million stares and maybe a couple of "Breeding rabbits are we?" type comments. Hohoho.

Okay enough about the vegetables.
I've been watching talk shows on youtube, cos like, it's my holiday and everyone knows I love talk shows. So since there arent any good channels on tv with those types of programmes, i just watch them on the internet. woohoo!
Anyway, I just have one thing to say.
People with REAL problems don't go on talk shows to proclaim them to the world.
I mean really. It's kind of a sweeping statement, but it seems pretty accurate to me. Cos' there has to be some amount of voluntarism involved in their decision to appear on tv right. So it's just really hard for me to believe that they would consent to being PUBLICLY analysed by some celebrity if they were truly depressed or had some kind of eating disorder or drug addiction. Like come on... it's dumb. And these people claim to be suffering these conditions for years and years, and suddenly, after being psycho-analysed by someone who isn't even qualified to make assumptions about another persons mental state, their eyes are completely opened and they agree to do whatever the host tells them to do.
uh.. WHUT!?!!
I bet half the time they're just pressured to say yes because they're being questioned in front of all these people in the audience. And besides that... would you really be so willing to go public if you had a psychiatric problem??? It's just way too suspicious man. Srsly.
Talk show hosts should leave that kind of stuff to the professionals. There are probably a ton of psychs with proper degrees and PhDs and stuff watching the shows and going like, "Stop stealing our clients Oprah!!!" and like waving their academic certificates around wildly or something. But... whatever i guess. As long as the people who need help are being helped. HOHO what a politically-correct statement. Seriously though, the talk-show-host-intervention thing annoys me cos' it screams 'publicity stunt', but i'm not going to get into a huge debate about it or anything.

Okay parentals and sisters. It is time to stop. Blogging seems like such a self-centered activity to me... i don't know. It's like a couple of minutes of me writing about myself. I mean HOW MANY freaking times have I used some variation of the word "I" in this entry??? This post must endeth noweth D:

-gretl.

Liesl: Assignments

Hello hello! =D

I have some videos to share!

First, it's this one:

http://guerrillacg.com/home/3d-polygon-modeling/the-polygon

I think you guys pretty much know by now what 3D is... =P But in case you're still not sure, this clip explains it quite well! It describes how the 3D software works.

And the next two links are videos of the assignments that I've done so far. Gretl's seen them already, but I haven't had the chance to show them to the rest of you!

Animating with clay shapes (Claymation!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lran2GD4Z5Q

This is known as stop motion animation. You move the object a little
and take a picture, then move it again and take another picture.
And you repeat this for about a couple of hundred over pictures. D:

Title sequence:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_IaGNCsj8I

Haha! For this assignment, we had just learned how to use a
software called After Effects, and we were supposed use that
software to create a short title sequence (10 to 12 secs long) using
our first and last name, and the words "Fall 2009".

Yes! So, that's it for now. I've actually done other assignments like
drawings and stuff, but I didn't think to take pictures of them. D:

Anyway it's getting late now (almost 11pm) and I need to wake up
early tomorrow cuz I have to get some things done before my Photo
Storyboard class, which is at noon.

Goodnight all! Miss you very much! Can't wait to see all of you
again in Dec! <3

Anime Cat by Deborah Chua

Deborah drew a cat for me, she calls it an Anime Cat.

Stray cats

I just had the privilege of watching a cat poop.
It dug a hole in the soil and did a cat-style squat over it... for a good 45 seconds or so. And I'm kind of embarrassed to say that I was totally mesmerised. The cat didn't see me though; which is probably the only reason why it took a dump so calmly. I think mesh covered windows are probably kinda like tinted windows - you can't really look through them clearly.

I haven't yet mentioned that Melbourne is lacking in the stray-cat department.
There are like ZERO-ish stray cats around, which is interesting since they're so prevalent in Singapore. So yes, when I do see a cat jump over the fence from my room, it's pretty exciting.

-gretl.

Donuts

DONUTS FROM AUNTIE FLORENCE!!!! XDDDDD

Today nothing happened.

Still trying to figure out what I'm going to do over the next 2 weeks.
It's kind of hard planning to relax as much as possible without letting myself revert back to the inactivity of 3 months ago. Plus plus, I'm planning to entertain myself on a budget. So like no fancy theme park visits or therapeutic spa sessions if you know what i mean.

It's still kind of cold these days, but not so cold that i have to shut the window and switch on the heater. I can actually leave the window open all night without waking up to find icicles hanging from my lashes.
Downside to the weather getting warmer would definitely be the bugs. They're ALIVE. And if I leave my window open, they find their way through the mosquito-mesh-net thingy and start flying around the table lamp... which is ANNOYING. They're easy to kill cos they're all slow and probably drowsy from hibernation or something, but there are so freaking many of them. And they're not quite big enough for me to be super annoyed with them, so when i see one i usually just ignore it but then they start accummulating and accummulating and i get pissed.

Anyway. I'm really started to like avocado. (and haha i just realised i went from talking about bugs to talking about food.) Like it's seriously nice. I mean I've never liked butter all that much, but i can see why it's called the butter-fruit in Chinese. U.C.H. told me that. It's kind of tasteless... but not exactly, if you know what i mean. Texture-wise it's all creamy like durian flesh, except without the pungent smell.

By the way I think I heard a gunshot on Sunday night. Which is both scary and exciting. Well... it's probably only exciting cos I heard it from afar, like in the comfort of this room, HOHO.
If I was actually at the scene I dont think I would've thought it was "exciting" at all.

-gretl.

Grisl And Macho Pics!!!!

Grisl is so cute!................ and Macho...................... I am not putting many Grisl pics in because I am protecting Grisl. :)

YES, another cupcake... I MEAN CUPCAKES!!! :DDD

YES!!! MY TUITION TEACHER DID GIVE ME 2 CUPCAKES!!! yess!! :DD
However, it was destroyed by the heat.. :( so I could not take a picture of it and I had to eat it very quickly!!! ~munch~ But at least it was tasty! :) One was Blue (squashed up) and the other was Pink(Unfinshed) !!!! :)

Yes I'm still alive

Oh my gosh sorry I haven't posted anything in like forever D8 ... or like, a week.

ANYWAY i'm sorry.
Good news is, today's the last day of term!!! Meaning that after my literature exam next Tuesday, I'll be FREE till like october. Which is so freakishly cool and awesome. There's like 4 terms in the course, and a break after each one. WHY NOT EMPLOY THE SAME SYSTEM, SINGAPORE???
Anyway yes, it is a beautiful thing. I mean how the australians are so laid back about work and school and stuff. Like on most days, the shops close by 5 o'clock because HELLO people have families to go home to. And even though I thought it was annoying and stupid at first, I'm really totally okay with it now. (A) People aren't biologically programmed to work 9 to 5 workdays, (B) People spend more time with their families, and (C) It stops me from spending.

But I digress. The reason I haven't been online much lately is, instead of having staggered deadlines all the stupid assignments were due this week, meaning I had to finish a truckload of work at basically the same time. There was an assignment for environment and development, psychology, english, literature and an essay test for history of ideas. And let me tell you, these assignments weren't fill-in-the-blanks type worksheets. For e&d, i had to drag my butt down to one of the suburbs near the melbourne cbd to take pictures and record stuff about the houses and architecture there. And psychology was a group presentation thing regarding ethical issues, which meant that I had to stay back in school a couple of times to meet up with my group members. F.Y.I. I HATE staying back in school for any reason at all. After my last lesson, I have to leave the site of learning or I will start to feel very very depressed. ANYWAY blah. It's all over now... YAY 8D and I feel like I hardly did anything. Which is ... bad.

OH okay. MAJOR updates on the weather here. So spring supposedly starts in september right? But the day before september 1st, like august 31st, it was so insanely cold I began to doubt the accuracy of that statement. BUT BUT!! The very next day, it was warm enough for me to break a sweat while walking to the train station D: Amazing.
So the weather has been weird. Like this is the weirdest it's been since I got here, cos some days it's really warm, and other days it's so cold my fingers turn bluish. Getting dressed in the morning isnt as simple as it was before. Also, the wind has picked up a lot. And when I say picked up, I mean reached speeds of epic proportions. It's not like a pleasant breeze or some crap. It's so annoyingly strong that I don't even bother brushing my hair in the morning. My hair looks like it needs to be tamed with a whip by the time I reach school.
Like okay. Yesterday, there wasn't much wind at all, but it was really really cold. Like winter cold, when there's a chill that goes right through you - even if you're wearing like a million layers of clothing. And then today, it was SUPER WINDY, but really warm. So like warm windy. Which is not a nice thing.

urhm i will stop here cos i've suddenly blanked and there's nothing i have to say. so... bye! (:

-gretl.


HAHAHHHAHHAHA WATCH THIS VIDEO FROM FAILBLOG!!!

Nilam's Drawings......

MOMO!! XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

My CUPCAKE!! :P

I LOVE MY CUPCAKE THAT THE TUITION TEACHER GAVE ME!!!!!!!!!! IT'S SOOOOO YUMMY!!!!!!!!!!!! :PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

Liesl: I COOKED AGAIN

I COOKED AGAIN. xD

There's still a ton of rice in the rice-cooker. I over-estimated! D:

And I think I over-fried the veggies cuz they're brownish at the sides. -_-

But it doesn't taste too bad. =P

Liesl: I COOKED

I COOKED. 8D

Well, the sauce is premade, but HEY, I added the hotdog slices and the salt and pepper k!

Muahahar! -Sense of achievement-

Poverty and an Affirmation.

I haven't had any money since Sunday.

I'm being totally serious.
Really.
Like no money.
At all.
Okay 71 cents.
But that's it.
And you can't withdraw 71 cents from the bank.
So I basically have NO money.
Which is kind of a weird situation to be in... especially if you're miles away from home in a strange foreign land where they say their e's like a's and sandwiches are called "sangers".

Anyway, I quite like knowing I don't have any money in my bank account... it stops me from spending. It might be a good idea for me to keep as minimal an amount in the accessible account and dump the rest in the savings one. It might also be a good idea for me to stop talking about my bank details on the internet.

Haven't said much about my course mates and stuff, so I will now... thank God I'm making nice friends here. I mean I seriously thought the friends thing would be my biggest setback, cos' I'd just be the loser-y dork that no one wanted to be friends with. I'm still a loser-y dork, but at least people generally don't seem to mind being my friend.

Topic jumping - I don't remember authorising it to be September D: it's so freaking fast. But good, I guess. December cometh!

Errr... what else.

OH more stuff for cheh to read/look at XD : This and this. HOHOHOH.

Oh and... one of my friends re-dyed his hair. It was this really vile shade of orange with copper tones, then he bleached it twice to get it to an ah beng blonde, then after two days, dyed it completely jet-black. I'm waiting for his hair to start falling out in clumps.
How in the world can someone do so much crap to their hair in such a short period of time??? Even though guys have short hair and it supposedly "grows out really fast", it's got to be damaging to do that kind of nonsense so often. Sheesh.. THE STRANGENESS of people. Although I have to admit, being in a country full of coloured-haired people does make me feel like my black mop is lacking. And these blondes and redheads aren't even satisfied with their natural colours. I mean I KNOW for a fact that there are no human genomes for pink, blue or green hair D8< So, to the blue-haired dude I see around the uni every tuesday afternoon... you're not fooling anyone!!!!! I'm actually started to have thoughts about dying my hair after seeing all this colour. Like bright bright red. Neon, McDonalds-y red. Hoho! But of course, my dear parents, you need not panic and buy the earliest ticket to Melbourne and try to stop me. I'll probably never dye my hair. Me and chemicals have a hate-hate relationship. Yes. I scorn all forms of chemical ingestion and application, and in turn, chemicals agonize me in their most evil form - through Chemistry and the like. By the way, the weather is getting warm here. Like yesterday I was walking to school and I felt this weird sensation in my arms and legs. Then I remembered the sensation was called "feeling warm". I have also, thankfully, regained control of my fingers and toes, which have in fact been numb up till two days ago. I just didnt realise it because.. well, they were numb. haha I'm kidding. But seriously though, it's much warmer now than it was in July when I first came.

[portions of this entry have been extracted at the request of ma]

And now me and my thoughts will go to bed.

-gretl.

P.S. Sorry if this entry is fragmented and stuff. For some reason blogger screwed up and deleted a chunk of my post, so I had to retype. ANNOYING TECHNOLOGICAL CRAP.

Liesl: Golden Gate Bridge

Reaching...

Tada!!! =D

Golden energy! YEAAHH..

Woot!!! xD

Liesl: The Room

My wardrobe is the brown one!

My bed is the top one!

My desk is the messy one! =P

Drawing is Unwinding.

My term break is coming soon. September the 18th or so.
I can't wait for this.
I can't wait to have time to do fun stuff like DRAW.

Not that school here isn't fun... it is. Relatively.
Definitely a lot more fun than VJC was!
But studying all this stuff and thinking about what I'm going to do if I get into Melbourne Uni is making me realise that I really just want to draw things. NOT drawing sucks. I think i'm getting antsy because of the lack of right brain to pencil action.

Anyway I miss home and everyone at home.
And I miss cheh a lot. Omg i just said "cheh" aloud to myself and it sounded weird. I mean apart from the weirdness of me saying things aloud to myself, the sound of the word "cheh" is like, strange. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooo D8
Did i even call you that cheh? I did right!? I wasn't one of those disrespectful people who addressed their older siblings by name!
GRARHAHRRRRHH ): Okay anyway, here's something for you to read, CHEH:

READ ME.

-gretl.