IH Food Fair

Last Saturday was the International House Food Fair, and it's basically this grand event where residents have the chance to cook up their country's cuisine for everyone else to try. So after lunch, a whole bunch of us (the Malaysian stall) went over to one of our friend's maze unit to spend the entire afternoon cooking Malaysian delicacies. What did we cook? We had nasi lemak with all the condiments (sliced egg, fried peanuts, fried anchovies, and sambal), and roti canai and curry chicken and teh tarik and honeydew sago and bubur cha cha and sea coconut longan. We more or less made everything from scratch, with the exception of the roti canai (it came ready-to-cook in batches from the local supermarket I think). So the following are some pictures of the Malaysian residents (and some whose Malaysian-ness can be questioned) in the process of food preparation:

The event itself was held at the dining hall, and we decorated our stall with some pieces of batik and sarong, and the whole while you could see other countries setting up their stalls as well... All very noisy, chaotic and jovial, I must say!

The people came swarming in at about 6.30 pm. Apparently the event was open to non-residents as well, and some "VIPs" like alumni came and there were even judges to taste the various food and all. I'm afraid to say Malaysia didn't win any awards (we didn't even get any honourable mentions), but I sure had plenty of fun! At the very beginning I went around collecting and tasting food from the other countries: I ate stir-fried lamb and fried rice with beef and vegetables (China/Taiwan), weiswurst (Bavarian sausages) from the Germanic Europe stall, fried instant noodles with XO sauce and luncheon meat (Hong Kong), okonomiyaki (some sort of pancake/omelette thingy) and onigiri (some sort of sushi?) from Japan, bibimbab (rice with mixed veg) and kimchi pancake from Korea, laksa and ondeh ondeh (a green kueh with gula Melaka and dried coconut) from Singapore, pecan pie (USA), and of course I had to try our very own nasi lemak and roti canai and curry chicken and teh tarik and honeydew sago!

Team Australia:

Team Singapore:

Team South Africa:

Team Korea:

Team Germany:

Team Thailand:

Team Philippines/Indonesia:

Team Hong Kong:

Team China/Taiwan:

Team Russia/Ukraine:

After that it was the dreaded part of the evening - cleaning up! But it went pretty quickly, and we all trooped back to our friend's maze unit and ended up watching Hitch and eating up leftovers and throwing away stuff that would spoil.

And that's it for the IH Food Fair. My only regret is that we won't be having another next semester (I think it's an annual event). Sigh. It was so much fun, and looking back, I kinda am disappointed that I didn't get to taste even half of the different kinds of dishes available (I think I prolly only tasted a quarter, maybe less). What great fun! Cheers, y'all!

Another week!

Well, it’s another weekend here, and it’s been a pretty worrisome week for me, especially as thought of my essays and their deadlines keep gnawing at the back of my mind at all moments of the day! I’m glad to say I’ve completed the first draft of my first essay (not quite my first essay, rather the essay that’s due to be handed in first), and in my humble opinion, it’s the worst piece of crap I’ve written in all my academic life. But at least, it’s something. And honestly, I dunno what they want in the first place, so it’s like blindfolding yourself and hoping your arrow’s aimed in the right direction.

It’s getting really cold now, and most days the weather forecasts are below 20°C, and some days I wear a scarf and my big bulky brown winter jacket to class. I think I might have to start using my gloves. And maybe even my beanie. The latter cos it’ll just look so cool, no?

You know it’s winter when the IH Kitchen start serving hot lunches every day. We used to get cold lunches every alternate day (i.e. no ‘hot’ meal, we construct our own sandwiches or wraps from the available bread, tortilla, cold meats, cheese, salads, etc.), but last week one of the kitchen staff told me we’d be having hot lunches every day, so yippee! And they’ve started serving soup as well, and it’s always so popular, if you go for lunch late you might end up with no soup (it’s self-service). So far there’s been a variety of soups: cream of mushroom, tomato soup, cream of corn (I think), chicken noodle soup, and some strange dark brown-ish soup (this one wasn’t very popular). I’ve taken to bringing some soup back to my room, and further heating it up with the microwave so that the cheese (I always add some to my soup, extra yummy!) will melt and slurp slurp! Nothing better than hot soup on a cold day. Which is why I ended up purchasing a couple of cans of condensed soup (together with some other food stuff) from Coles this afternoon, cos when I come back after class, dinner’s all over and the soup’s all gone, so maybe this way I’ll be able to have some hot soup in my room, y’know?

Here are more pictures of my late dinners this week. Monday was some chicken pasta thingy, Tuesday was spaghetti bolognaise, and Wednesday was lamb chops.

And I was hungry (and curious), so I cooked up a packet of Coles instant noodles, oriental flavour! The packaging is totally plain (it's supposed to be like real cheap noodles, 5 packets for AUD$1.09!) and well, it still says "2 minute noodles". But I cooked it up, and well, it doesn't taste as 'oriental' as I thought it'd be. I thought that would mean some chilli or sourness, but no, it reminds me of a very mild version of the Mee Daddy that used to be popular back when I was in high school. The noodle portions are more generous than your typical Maggi Mee though, and the texture of the noodles was pretty good. At least it didn't go all soggy and mushy after soaking a while in the hot gravy. But I still think nothing beats a packet of good old curry-flavoured Maggi Mee, y'know?

And that’s it, people! Tomorrow is the International Food Fair here at IH, so I’ll be blogging about that in the next blogpost... Till then, cheers people!

Pizza at Leichhardt!

After you've stayed here at IH for 3 months, you start realizing that everything starts to taste pretty much the same. Okay, so maybe you don't need 3 months to come to that conclusion (it took me 3 weeks), and you get real sick and bored of the food here (more on this later) but anyway, some residents decided to go for pizza on Sunday evening, and they dragged me along with them.

I didn't know where we were going, so it was a good thing they knew. I hopped on a bus to Leichhardt (AUD$3.30 each way, so total AUD$6.60 spent on transportation), some area about 10-15 minutes away, and it was this kinda old-style (well actually everything here in Sydney looks old-style) neighbourhood place with shops and all, and we came across and arch that said "Italian Forum" or something like that, and we arrived at some square, and after about 5 minutes of standing around deciding where to eat, we found a nice place called Caesars. We chose to sat out in the open, under the cold night air, and the waiter guy lit up this thing that looked like a lamp post, and I suppose it was some heat-conducting thingy cos it went up in flames and burnt the metal red and I felt warmer.

Despite the cold (it's autumn, people!), it was actually real pleasant, except for the fact that a plane would pass overhead like every 15 minutes or so. Everything on the menu looked good, but I was kinda sick of pasta so I ordered a pepperoni pizza instead. And a Pepsi, cos they didn't have Coca-Cola down on the menu.

The pizza was the thin crust type, and sometimes it was quite tough on the teeth, but it was humongous, and all of us exchanged pizza slices with each other so we all got to try different flavours. Mine was tasty!!!! The others had pretty good pizzas as well, but I felt mine was the tastiest (you can't go wrong with a good old classic like pepperoni pizza!).

I hope to go back there again sometime. It's pretty expensive and all (pizza was AUD$19, drink was AUD$4), but it was really a great experience. And the pizza was good. So maybe I'll go back next time, but in the day, so maybe I can take better pictures of the area and all.

And to give you an idea of the kinda late dinners I have from Mondays to Thursdays, here's a series of pictures I've taken over the last few weeks of my cold unmicrowaved (cos I feel it tastes so much worse after you reheat everything up) meals. Full of carbo and high in fat, and mega large portions. Don't you just pity me?

Cheers, people!

The last 2 weeks

I know I haven't been blogging for what seems like a very long time, but really, cut me some slack, it's only been like what, 2 weeks? And I've got a very good reason for my absence from blogosphere (is there such a word?): I seem to have some trouble sticking within the limits of my daily internet quota, and I constantly find myself in the deficit these past weeks, which means I can't visit external websites (i.e. websites not associated/linked to USyd) if my megabyte quota's in the negative. Does this make any sense? Or am I just confusing everyone reading this?

Nevermind if you're confused, I'll just move on to what's been happening so far.

First off was the Harbour Cruise thingy, which was on the 1st of May. The theme was "Incognito" and we were expected to dress up in formal disguise or something like that. To me this didn't quite make much logical sense. I mean, look, we're all residents under the same roof. It's not like just putting on a mask would render everyone unrecognizable, y'know? Anyway the cruise was on Saturday, so on Friday after lunch I went to Newtown (only 15-20 minutes' walk away) to search out a dress. I managed to find one that I liked in this little shop, so at least I had something to wear. For the disguise part, I found a paper/plastic mask in one of those shops that sell practically everything you can think of (reminds me of the shops you can find at MJC or Tabuan Jaya, you know the type). So the following evening, a whole bunch of us took a bus and took a 10 minute walk to King's Wharf #2 (I think that's what it's called) and there was a little boat-cruise thingy waiting there for us! There wasn't an actual sit-down dinner thingy, but there were servers in smart suits walking around with beautiful platters of little munchies. There were some samosa kinda pastries with stuffing that tasted like cheese, and there were pies (rather messy these ones, especially with the hot juice oozing down my chin), some tough beef (at least I think they were beef) sandwiches, and of course, with all social functions here in Aussie-land, booze!!!!

Of course, there was also the Cowboys and Indians party in the Wool Room, but I didn't take any pictures of that event, but this here is a picture that's taken from the IH Facebook page:

One of my highlights of the past fortnight is when I finally purchased a pair of winter boots! I saw it being advertised on the telly, and I went out like the next day to get it!!!! I know you're wondering what I'm gonna do with winter boots and all, especially when I bring it back home with me to the steamy sweltering weather of Malaysia, but for now I walk around in my room with it and they keep my feet warm and cosy (it's real cold here, sometimes it gets as cold as 9 degrees Celsius!).

Then just this Wednesday (12 May) there was something like a student council election here in USyd. I think it was called the USU Board Elections or something like that, but anyway I guess they wanted as many people to vote as possible so they were giving out AUD$5 vouchers to everyone who voted. I voted. I spent my voucher on a 600 ml bottle of Vanilla Coke and because we won't get any real change back, I also asked for a hot chocolate. I had to give the Courtyard Cafe people a dollar extra, but hey! For a hot chocolate and a bottle of Coke? Hurrah!

Then last night, Su-Wen came over to my room and we were chit-chatting and suddenly we felt very very hungry (the dinners here haven't been that fantastic lately) so we decided to cook up some pasta. So we opened a packet of linguine and a bottle of pasta sauce, added extra garlic, and ate! Yummy!

And then today we IH residents had a barbeque in Victoria Park just across the road. They're smart, see, cos there was this Inter-Floor Games event after that, and that was the only way to make sure all the residents would be at the park - by telling everyone there was no lunch in the dining hall so everyone had to go to the park for lunch. Smart. Here are some pictures from this morning:

And that's it for the past fortnight. This week marks the third month I've been here on Sydney, and it's simply mindblowing how I've been surviving on my own all this while. I've still got approximately 6 to 7 months left here, and here's hoping I learn to blog more regularly. Cheers, people!