After one week...

... I've finally found the time to blog! A lot of interesting things have happened since the last time I blogged (well, interesting to me anyway!), and I'll just give you a heads up that this one will be a relatively long blogpost.

Remember the Assassination Game I was blogging about previously? Well, last Sunday evening I came back from dinner to find an envelope pushed under my door. Excitedly, I checked its contents and found a paper with some reminders and additional information about the game, and more importantly, a little plastic knife with the name of the person I was supposed to 'kill'. To cut a potentially long story short, let me just say that I didn't even last 24 hours. I got 'killed' at approximately 7.20 pm Monday night, on my way back from the dining hall. So I'm out of the game. But it was fun for the 19 hours it lasted, ooooooh, the paranoia and constant anxiety! But in all honesty, I was kinda relieved to be out of the game. It means I get to walk around on my own without looking over my shoulder and peeking left and right from behind a wall before I go anywhere.

On the same night I got 'killed', I found my dinner missing. I'm not sure what happened, whether they didn't prepare my dinner for me or whether someone stole my dinner and had a great time eating it, but I found myself going back to my room, 'dead' and hungry. I tried to make do with a hot mug of Vegemite, but at approximately 11.30 pm I got real hungry and decided to whip up a nice hot meal for myself. I didn't wanna eat anymore of my instant noodles (conserve it for another day!), so the only other option was pasta. So I boiled up a handful of spaghettini and started rummaging around for some ingredients to eat it with. I have a few bottles of pasta sauce lying around but I didn't wanna open them cos then I'd have to eat pasta for the next few meals (once you open the jar you've really got to eat it within a few days before it spoils). So then I decided to just mix the spaghettini with some butter, salt and pepper. Not bad, I must say. A little lacking in contents, but pretty flavourful, and entirely edible.

We then had a fire evacuation practice followed by an IH photo session (taking pictures of us residents as one big happy unified group) scheduled at 7 am on Wednesday. So I set my handphone (which I use as my alarm clock, poor me) to 6.30 am, to give me enough time to properly 'wake up' so I don't look bleary-eyed and sloppy in the photo. Can you imagine my horror when the fire drill jolted me out of my sleep at about 6.15 am???? We were all so pissed off! The theory now is that someone had taken a shower so hot that the steam had set off the fire alarm. Anyway, I went out in my shorts and t-shirt, but it was so freezing cold I started shivering and my teeth were chattering like a monkey on drugs. So I decided to go back into the building to get my jacket. The whole while I was thinking it would be the biggest irony if there really had been a real fire and I had gone in to get my jacket cos it was so cold and I could just see the next day's newspaper headlines: "International student perishes in fire from the cold." Get it? Anyway, they cancelled the fire evacuation practice (cos obviously we already knew how to evacuate, what with the seven times the fire alarm had gone off), and the photo session took such a short time that you could tell people were upset it was over so quickly. Breakfast was good, though. They served us sausages and bacon and pancakes and croissants and scrambled eggs and grilled tomatoes and yoghurt and canned peaches and cereal and orange juice and even hot cross buns and Easter eggs!!!! Yummy yummy yum!

And that night was also the first time I used the microwave in my room (actually I'm not even sure if it's really a microwave). I was real tired that night (what with only 2 hours of sleep the previous night and 3 hours of sleep after breakfast) so I brought my late dinner back to my room and only ate it after I'd finished some work.

Yesterday passed quickly enough. I was ecstatic when yesterday's class came to an end, and so far I can't quite wipe the grin off my face - the holidays are finally here! It's the Easter break, and it means we get the next week off. For the rest, they're supposed to be studying cos they have midterm exams after the break, but for me, since I don't have exams, well, it means more time for rest and recreation, muahahahaha! So I started off my holidays by going to Broadway with some friends to do some grocery shopping. I purchased 2 bottles of Coles cola, a bottle of Just Juice orange juice, a bottle of Schweppes lemonade cordial, a couple of lemons, soap, shampoo + conditioner, a packet of Doritos chips for my seminar presentation (because every group so far has been bribing the audience with chocolates and potato chips and brownies and cupcakes), some microwaveable (is there such a word?) plastic containers, a packet of pasta (only 99 cents!) and some cards. That's a lot of shopping at one time, I know, and I nearly collapsed carrying everything back to IH!!!!

Today was another great day. I woke up late, and we had chicken schnitzel for lunch. I managed to spend a few hours at the piano in the music room, then went back to my room (didn't manage to nap after all, though). Then it was time for dinner (I chose the vegetarian option tonight, some sweet tomato-ey tofu thingy), and after that a bunch of us decided to go to Chinatown to check out the night market. There I was, thinking it would be one of those markets with fresh seafood just brought in from the ocean or sea or whatever they have here in Sydney and vegetables and fruits fresh from the farms and crowds of people yelling and pushing and shoving and all. Well, the crowd of yelling pushing shoving people was there alright, but no fish or vegetables or fruits, just lotsa little stalls (very much like the ones you'd find at Sunday market back home) selling little trinkets like earrings and toys and even shoes! There were a couple of guys practising some lion dance moves on top of high poles and when they started playing lion dance music I kinda wondered whether Chinese New Year was around the corner. Maybe it was just one of those attract-the-tourist kinda event.

Then we found ourselves a-hankering for a little sweet dessert, and we made our way over to Darling Harbour. There we found ourselves inexplicably drawn to the Lindt Chocolat Cafe, and I had a chocolate milkshake. I found it very sweet at first, but after a while you get used to the sweetness and it starts tasting really refreshing and yummy. It helped that the view was so fantastic, overlooking the harbour and all (although rather, it was my back that was looking at the harbour).

And now I'm watching Ben-Hur on the telly. I hope all the pictures get uploaded quickly, cos there's plenty of pictures in this post and sometimes it takes forever just to upload a few. So that's it for this week, people. Till the next blog, cheers!