Was walking home the other day from a lecture that ended at 1730hrs. Hmm and I always thought that the sky turns dark sooner in Australia. However, every time I bring up my comment about the brightness to my brother, he would give me replies like: "Aiya you think too much la~~" hmm~~~
Anyways, 5:30s should be considered early evening in my opinion, still bright bright and sun still in sight.. But then..
Does this look like 5:30 to you? I'm not mistaken.. the sky turns dark sooner in Australia.. at least in winter anyway..

Palazzo Versace

We had buffet to celebrate the graduation of my brother and one other friend and the dinner was held at Palazzo Versace Hotel. Girls, if you don't know what this place is is about, shame on you.. It's the hotel from the leading international fashion house Versace, founded by the late Gianni Versace. *0*
Yes thats right. It's the first and only Versace hotel, located at the Gold Coast, around 5km from my place. The hotel had a dim classy orange lighting throughout. Service is so good it's a little 夸张 lo.. really live up to its 5 little stars. One more thing special about the hotel, you can find the Versace face logo almost everywhere, on vases, doors, sofas and on and on..

Heres how it looks like.
p.s. pictures are a little blur due to poor lighting

Lobby

Super big chandelier

The cushion on the sofa.
Very hard to see but it's the Versace logo at the center

Every table at the lobby has candles

Versace logo on the glass vase

Toilet

Even the left and the right water tap has the Versace face on it!

Others

Versace boutique in Versace hotel.. hmm...

Carpark!
The little square holes that forms the face will change colour de.

Alright let me get on with the food. Upon reaching the podium, we were greeted by this amazing guy with this amazing service. Very simple yet professional short chat with us on the way of bring us to the table. Simply the best service i have ever seen so far, ever. Even place the cloth ting that is suppose to be on you lap, on your lap. Next, he informed us of the service waitress who was providing our table services. She soon came over, had a short chat about the occasion we where celebrating before we starting on our feast. The spread was really good too. Oysters, sushi, sashimi, roasted beef and many more. Even the deserts alone can make a meal. Never take a lot of pictures for the food, cos like very pai sae la~ haha at the lobby take so many like very sua ku liao~~

Dessert! Looks good!

Top-of-the-line coffee/tea free flow

The candle stand also got the face!

After the long fulfilling meal, we were suddenly given a pleasant surprise from the waitresses~ simply thoughtful!

Well that very much concludes my fulfilling dinner. Btw for those who are wandering, the standard price for the buffet is A$73 per pax. It's not hard to understand why the service is so tok kong.

First Day of School

Yesterday was my first day of school, and I attended 2 lectures. At 10am in the morning, I had the End of Life Studies lesson. Unlike the business degrees (which consists of a huge amount of China, Taiwan & Hong Kong students), the other programs had very little percentage of international student, and the percentage of Asian students was even lesser.
It's a 3 hour lesson all the way to 1pm, and so, there was a break time in between. It was during that time that a guy named Alvin came and introduce himself. He is like the only other Asian in the lecture and to my fucking surprise, he is from Singapore! You have no idea how happy I was. I started complaining to him how sick I got of speaking English and how much i wanted to find someone to speak to in Singlish. Seriously, I've never speak so much English in my entire life. You go up the bus, the bus driver talks to you in English. You go to your seat and the bunch of school kids behind you kao pei kao bu in English. You reach home, sit down, on the TV, and the news reporter reports the news in English. It's not that i did not expect it, but I didn't expect that speaking English can be like eating an oily buffet. ~.~
At afternoon, I had my first psychology lecture named Introduction To Psychological Sciences and Society. Over in this lesson, I was introduced to a long and on going debate on where the mind is. Where is the the mind? There is no doubt that the brain does the thinking but is the brain the only organ that does thought processing? Some ancient scholars believed that the heart is the mind and now, they might be right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sudmW97FZA0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky6eEiVbgMg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei6FmA6-N14
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY5SiWHDInQ

This is a four part video,very interesting but they contain some explicit images on medical procedures which may be disturbing to Peiqing. Peiqing if you are reading this, don't watch it! wait for Dunqi to tell you!

It just so happened that today is also my brother's graduation ceremony but the timing clash with my psychology lecture. After a long mental struggle, I've later decided to go for the lecture instead. I joined him later for a dinner celebration, Which i will cont' on my next post.

To Be Continued... (muahahaha)

Roommates

Hmm.. If i haven't remember wrongly, i used to mention that i have 2 indian room mates right? Well, they arrived 2 days ago and my place like changed a little~~ -.-
Firstly, without a doubt, my place became significantly lively. As i currently sleep in the living room, what used to be my room also became a meeting room for them. They each have their own room and the living room connects the rooms together.
Next was that, like my brother, they don't have the habit to sleep early. Unlike them, I started sleeping at around 11pm after coming to Australia.
With my room being their meeting room and they not have the habit of sleeping early, I too was forced to sleep late. Therefore, these 2 days have been very tiring for me.
They smoke alot too! They like smoke faster then when i was smoking at Bintan? But they are really very impressive when it comes to smoking la haha. In Singapore, they got sell ang hun, which is all the tobacco weed in a packet and it comes with gum paper. So to smoke these ang hun you have to wrap the tobacco weed using the gum paper. No filter, but its a cheaper alternative to the costly cigarettes. well they smoke that too, but... lets look at some pictures... LOL

Normal gum paper, used to wrap the tobacco..
Winfield brand tobacco weeds.
ang hun filter!
wah!
Ang hun wrapping tool?! Wah wah!!!

I'm really impressed. Ang hun in singapore is like the cheap and less healthy way of smoking. And you have to wrap the tobacco yourself so if you are not good at it, chances are the fire will extinguish every now and then when you smoke. Well thats not the case here. With that red little tool, all you have to do is put the paper, throw in the tobacco, close the ting and there you have it! perfect cigarettes! want filter? just throw in the filer! Simple as that!
But my room mates, they don't only smoke this. They have like a wide variety of choices for packed cigarettes too.
Like in Singapore, Australia tax heavily on cigarettes too, costing A$10++ per pack too. There are also collectible pictures of clogged arteries and such on them too. Being back recently from India, my room mates brought in 2 rows of Dunhill cigarettes... Hmm kind of reminds me of some one I know back in singapore... hmm... LOL

Back to the main topic. Yesterday night at around 5, they started chatting in the living room. by 6, they cooked a variety of food and snacks. At 7, they began drink, joining other aussies from other apartments to chat and drink outside. Around 9, they were back with 2 more indian friends. They live nearby and often hang out together. By 10, you could tell that they are a little drank liao. At around 11, one of their friends left. 11:30, They started to try convincing their other friend to go party at surfers paradise ( the orchard road of gold coast i mention the last time) By 12, their unwilling friend got dragged into going club by my drank room mates. LOL.
And so they left, 12am in the morning to club.

Now I'm up and after clearing up some of the damages, here is what i got..

One basin full of dirty dishes and..

3 bags full of crap.

Lets hope they become more tidy in the future.

Boredom

Today, i have been reading up on my textbook and i learn something new. Let me try to explain this to all of you. The basic goal of a psychologist can be classified into 4 stages. They are: Describing, Explaining, Predicting and Controlling. What each of them means is as follows..

Describing
To define the situation base on facts. There should be no guessing involved and purely base on facts.
e.g. a liwei's food consumption greatly increases when he is at his apartment with nothing to do as compared to outside shopping.

Explaining
To list the factors that might be causing the behavior.
e.g. the liwei's apartment got nothing to do and boredom forces him to look for food in desperation.

Predicting
To guess it's future behavior base on the current facts and patterns and put the prediction to test.
e.g. Put a box of chocolate in the liwei's fridge and it should magically disappear in half an hour.

Controlling
To make the behavior happen or not happen.
e.g. Send the liwei some presents to slow down his habit of eating.

Heh, just joking. But those 4 stages are real. and my place is honestly a very boring place

3 Day Holiday Part 3

Woke up very early today. Guess I'm not very used to sleeping in my cousin's place, and i was up at 6am~ that's Singapore time 4am only! Maybe you haven sleep lo~ heh. When they have all woke up, we went for breakfast at this place called Gunshot Cafe. This place looks like it's designed by some art guy cause' eat there makes you feel like you are dining in an art gallery. It's pack with people when we went and queuing took around 20 minutes while waiting for food took almost an hour. But it's like this in Australia. Everyone is all laid-back and relaxed so there is really no need to rush really. Just go with the flow and take things easy.

Brick walls and rattan lamp shades

Beautiful art pieces in a beautiful cafe

Strawberry with nuts and icing, my breakfast

My brother's breakfast, cheese, salmon and egg

After this hearty meal, we went to a flea market.. Not my cup of tea i feel, more for an auntie's liking. Sells plants, flowers, vegetables, clothings and lots of home made stuff ranging from fruit jams to fragrances to costume jewelries. Whats so interesting is that they offer such a strangely huge variety they even sell meat and offer full body massage. Another ting is that they actually open at 5.30 every morning and closes at 2 in the afternoon.

We then took a long long stroll to take a boat ride. The flea market is beside a river and so, we followed the river on foot for half and hour. The river cuts between the whole town and there are "stops" by the side of the river. Remember the bus concession tickets i mention earlier on? Well those tickets allow you to take the the boat rides too, as long as its within the zone that u paid for. And you can also buy tickets on board the boat.

On The Way

Australians can use cars for as long as it can move

Water skiing in the river

Wild ducks by the road side grass patch

Check out the side mirror~~

The boat on the bottom left is the public transport bus

Crowded children's park by the river

Random graffiti can be found anywhere

Barbecue is Australian's favorite past time
they call it "Barbie" in short

Boat Ride

To the boat waiting area

Front seat view

Upon getting back on land, we found ourself in the middle of the busy city.

I think they are having a road show for some egg company
and the mascot reminds me.....
Ta daa~~~~
I just happen to have some of these eggs in my kitchen lol

Casino!
If i'm not wrong it's the only casino in this whole state

Afterwards, while their parents when shopping, my cousins, my brother and myself when for some go kart-ing..
Dun see these karts small small, they travel around 90 - 100 km/hr! Thats equivalent to Singapore highway de speed limit ler~~ And these karts cannot start up by themselves so there will be people that drives on large dirt bikes that gives u a push to kick start your engine. Which also means that every time you get a spin out or when you crash, you need to wait for these guy to get you back on track.



After that was dinner. We went to this Japanese restaurant. Now, if you have eaten Sushi Tei and think that Sushi Tei is good, you will definitely love Sushi Bar. Their sushis taste so heavenly tasty and fresh. The japanese food here in Australia is really fantastic.


And then opposite the restaurant, I spotted a familiar company.. yet something feels wrong..
7-11 Petrol Station!! haha 神吧! Don't ask me why.. I also donno why 7-11 got patrol station..
After that, my cousins send us back my our apartment. It was a long long journey through an endless highway at the speed of 110km/h. The whole journey took around an hour or so. By the time we were back it was already late into the night and we when to bed soon after..
That concludes my 3 day holiday.. time flies.. soon I'll begin my school term. Hope the time spended studing will fly pass too~ then I'll be back in Singapore for new year!