Korea 2014 - Day 1

Finally the day came and myself, along with the lovely Xin, Nicole and Jenny, were heading off to Korea (with a stopover in Singapore where we'd pick up Nicole). Honestly, this trip was a little unexpected because we started planning it and then I realised I hadn't really asked my parents yet and ... well I'm thankful that they let me go :) and funded it :D

My parents and I drove with Jenny and her mum to the airport, arriving early and relaxing. On the otherhand, Xin had to rush to the airport (thankfully, she came a while before boarding). It seems that I always see someone at the airport ^^ Vincent rushed through the airport with his brother to catch up before boarding - but our boarding was later than expected so we actually got to hang out for quite a bit before having to move gates.

Mum's 50th

Just this past Friday A while ago (because I wrote it and forgot to post) was my lovely mother's 50th birthday - halfway to a century! So we planned some things for her :)
I think the funniest part coming out of this, was that we ended up with three cakes. One on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

:3

On Thursday, mum had gone shopping and I realised there was a cake in the fridge - I was all, okay - yeah birthday. Cake. All good - but then I realised that meant she'd bought her own cake ^^ and it was a cheesecake! Which, a couple days earlier, I'd been asking for (she doesn't even like cheesecake that much). I told Dad when he got home, and we just laughed at Mum - she was so embarrassed - she thought we'd forgotten ^^.

Buller Week 2014

The queue was so long!

To be honest, this is a quick post of something that happened half a year ago which I never got around to writing - and need to write before my next trip >< (look forward to Seoul, South Korea and Singapore posts!).

 About a week after getting back from New Zealand, I went with Nicole's family up to Mount Buller for a week. People must have realised that we had the best snow in ~17? years and the queue to get up the mountain was so long. Normally it takes an hour or so to get up the mountain, but I think it took nearly 2.5 hours!

We stayed at the Chalet and this trip is definitely a strong contender for my favourite ski trip. Just the freedom of no lessons and having so many runs open and being able to explore was so good.

The view across the valley

New Zealand Ski Trip 2014 - Part 3

So this is pretty late, but hopefully I remembered most of it :)

Day 5 
My brother didn't ski day 4 because he was sick, and then we decided to take Day 5 off so he and I think my sister? could recuperate a bit. We pretty much lazed around for the morning, heading off to Devil Burger at around 11:30am. Devil Burger is one of the recommended burger places in Queenstown, with the main being Fergburger (looking at least a half hour wait no matter the time of day). I forgot to take a photo of our food but I remember I got the daily special which was crazy - blue vein cheese sauce and rocket is all I can remember but oh so good.

tbh the mascot in real life wasn't that hot

On October 3rd, he asked me what day it was.

DaMon Day

So, this post was so not planned but someone mentioned it and then I thought why the hell not.
So here :) this is the story of David and Monica's birthday on Thursday.

Make a wish, birthday kids!

Gotham City - MPSU Ball 2014

MPSU Ball 2014 - yesssus
Cue obligatory selfies.

And this is the first photo because it's the most important.
Meet David. Cutie of Pharmacy and every girl's Squish.
(and maybe some squashes I don't know about ;))

I attended the MPSU Ball last Friday night and let me just say, I've attended a few large events this year and I am proud that I can remember this whole night and didn't make a fool of myself in front of my pharmily. Because Monash Parkville is a small campus and you do not want to get a bad reputation.

So my table was with my uni group - so Aesthetics Crew (yes....really) (I think someone named it as a joke but it stuck) plus some Mazenod boys we know :). Tina, also a member of AC (yes.. really), is also on the MPSU committee so she was able to plan our tables so that our friends were on tables close to ours.

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also referred to as Motor Neurone Disease, is the name given to a group of diseases where the nerve cells controlling the muscles that allow us to move, speak, breath and swallow, undergo degeneration and die. 

So really this is - yet again - another Ice Bucket Challenge. As a poor uni student, I don't usually donate money at all (I don't even give money at offerings in church services :/). Instead, I enjoy volunteer work. I will however, be donating this time round, to both MND Australia and to Ebola since Ebola hasn't had much funding from the public though the outbreak has been covered internationally. 

Colors - Melody and Harmony Tabs

So these tabs are really tedious and basically it's like, 4 lines over and over again in varying orders.
But I tabbed the whole thing out instead of writing the order because... I'm pabo.
oh well - at least this way you can just scroll through it and play it as you see ^^
enjoy

Download Here

faithfully,
Mai

Behind From The Start

So we're into the third week of uni and pretty much on the first day of lectures I dropped behind T.T
It's like I've come back from the midyear break with even worst study habits - I've changed the way I'm taking notes (which I'm happy about) but it takes me like 2.5 x time of actual lecture to get through a recorded lecture.

I've still got to finish up the New Zealand Skiing series and right now im sick sick sick :( I'm typing this up at uni, on a day where I don't have any classes but a meeting at 5 for the Open Day this Sunday for the Parkville Monash campus. And then at 6 I'll head over to this conference? thing about volunteering work and career pathways (finger food provided and bar tab)

New Zealand Ski Trip 2014 - Part 2

Day Three
On the first day skiing, we woke up early at 6am because we weren't sure how long it would take, but because the drive from Queenstown to Coronet Peak is only about 20minutes, we were able to wake up later at 7am on the next day.

The morning view after walking up the small hill

New Zealand Ski Trip 2014 - Part 1

Hi all, it's been a while since I've updated but I really will try harder from now on. This series of posts is going to be all about my recent ski trip to Queenstown, New Zealand, with my family and Nicole :) I tried to take more photos but I did forget at times.. hope you enjoy!

I've been to New Zealand before, in 2012 during the summer holidays. We went on a road trip of the south island in a campervan, stopping at towns such as: Omaru, Te Anau, Dunedin, and Queenstown. This time, we flew in directly to Queenstown and stayed at the Copthorne Lakeside Hotel in Queenstown. We arrived on the 7th of July, skiing five days and resting one, before flying back home on the 13th.

Day One
We caught an early morning flight, leaving home at 6:15 as a middle ground between the 6am that mum wanted, and the 6:30 that dad wanted. I'm thankful we left then because there was an accident on the freeway which caused dad to take some back roads and we arrived later to the airport than we had planned. We then ran into problems with checking in the baggage which left us walking quickly to the gates as soon as we passed immigration to make it to the plane on time. We were, however, not the last group to board. :)

Life Update ^^ (mainly uni)

Wow, I've been meaning to update - but then I never did.
But then I actually was going to but I couldn't sign into Google because my Monash log in would pop up~
Finally sorted it out :)

So.
There's still my hair dye post, sydney and a post for starting uni? Oh - I'll just pop that in here~

WELL (to actually start now)

"Schoolies" Part 2 - Hong Kong

Day 7 - Arriving in HK and the Fruit Market

Because Nicole's house had no printer - we were unable to check-in online and by the time we did check-in at the airport, there were no seats together. Thankfully we were close to each other though. It was a shorter flight, enough for me to watch two movies and sleep a little at the start - but there was some really bad turbulence which was really scary.

We stayed at the Royal Plaza Hotel and the taxi ride there was only about 250HKD (and after splitting that between four people, it's roughly 10AUD each - compared to the about 80AUD from Melbourne Airport to my house). We really just spent the rest of the day wondering the area near our hotel. Royal Plaza is attached to a shopping mall, and because the front entrance is under renovation - we entered through the mall. We really didn't spend a lot of time in that mall - just going there to buy breakfast from the bakery and pass through to get to the train stations.

The Fruit Market was about a street away and so we walked through there. There were lots of clothing shops on the sides of the street, but at the stalls there were fruit, phone cases (all iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4 's, so they're pretty up to date - but it was really annoying because I have a Galaxy S3), bags, kid sized clothing, and other usual things. They did not have stalls selling clothes in adult sizes.

Queue the first time we're all sharing one room with one bathroom. We really just spent the night lazing around waiting for the shower, planning out our next day and eating. In Hong Kong, we were definitely sleeping and waking up earlier - it was more tiring because we weren't getting driven everywhere and had to walk and take a lot of public transport.