Prepare for a long sleep

HEWSO - Matrix Solution Team

I have well prepared myself for a long sleep in tomorrow to compensate my under sleep hours in the past few days. I have also rewarded myself with big meals. Paying a good amount of money for a delicate dinner with Janice in a Thai restaurant; enjoying a nice breakfast at Aunt Mabel’s house and munched snacks all the way to grannies’ house. hmm… three days holiday before new semester, if our team does not win.

Today I was dozing on my way to grannies’ house. Halfway of the journey, my eyes slid open a little bit and were suddenly stunned by a late summer Melbourne suburban view lay in front. Greens from trees on both sides of the road extended to an eternal end. Peered from the bus window, an enjoyable journey was on its way. Melbourne is a lovely place, as long as it is not in those gloomy rainy days.

I have a second thought on moving to Sydney. As more and more Asian, especially from inland China, occupy there, I may feel expel from them. I am quite an arrogant person, always want to be in the top. On the other hand, I want an excited yet less competitive life, which is impossible. In the real world, once you stir your life ripple, you can only keep the ball going. Am I paradoxic? I am also a serious person, that I don’t think it will be easy for me to get out off the things I commit to. That is why I will never choose to live in Hong Kong. I don’t want to myself die under stacks of work and numerous of stress.

In my “To do” list, names of friends are long listed under the catching up category. Sometimes it is good to have a certain amount of friends. However, I always have things on in my diary, friendship is left to “luck would have it” kind of phenomenon. I think it would be better for me to know someone who has lots of friends. Then I can take a short cut to expand my contact scope without putting efforts to retain.

I was waiting for at a tram stop when I finished everything on HEWSO on Thursday. Suddenly, I realised that I wore the same black top last year this time at the same tram stop. I was about to work for a crappy café in South Yarra. My mind set at that time was in chaos; lost my soul totally in an unknown big smoke, Turn a page to this year, a new flesh with a clear soul stands out. I know what direction I should pursue and how.

No matter how hard I commit to study, I just can not get good marks from any of my commerce subject. My InterMicro result comes out today with a disappointed mark. Look back to my previous years’ results, I will never get lower than 70 in any media subjects; on the other side of my degree, economic has not yet passed the 70 mark. I know even I can not achieve something that is impossible for me to get, I am still content. Because I have done my best to all I meant to do; if things do not turn out right, I will not consider myself a loser.

My sense of cleanness gets extremely day by day. Since I moved out to a share house, I require everything must be clean in MY OWN WAY. I could not stand a spot of stain in our living room, and the feeling of disorder of things.

Ice cream over weight

Tonight after we practiced our presentation, we took our opinions out on the table and discuss with Nicole about her commitment as in our team. She wanted to pull out several times during our conversation. I am sure she will eventually turn up for presentation tomorrow, but she definitely will not perform well. It was risky to take things out in the last minute. We should either tell her straight away once we found her lack of commitment, or tell her after the presentation. I don’t know if we have done the right thing. As we had done it, then just let her think about it tonight. No matter win or lose, I get a lot out of HEWSO.

For presentation in front of groups of people, I am really lack of experience and confidence. When I speak in a foreign language, it is hard to master the pronunciation and the flow of words. The same thing not only happens when I speak in English, but in mandarin as well. Several Chinese friends had questioned my nationality and tried to find out the reason for my bad mandarin accent. Maybe it is because I did not really like to speak in mandarin and imitated the bad Hongkie accents.

My housemates are all back. Our house becomes live again. I am looking forward to living with them again. Hopefully we will have a lot of fun living together, if I am not that furious on cleaning up.

I have been eating tones of ice cream within the past few days. Normally I don’t like to have sweets, at least not late at night. However, my orexis cannot stop me eating fattening stuff. My belly is going to stick out again soon.

An amazing name

Two days before HEWSO final presentation, everything comes to the final stage. As such, our teams work, at least my work, ease a lot. I feel like I have already finished my onus for this project. I had put in a lot of extra work that I was not necessarily to. Taken things worse, on Monday, before our mock presentation, I was discontent with Nicole, one of our team’s “best” marketing types of speaker. She is an excellent sales, however, without knowing the product and an ego to know, how can she represent our team? The night before that, five of us (Kate, Jenny, Eric, James and me) were exhausted on touching up with the project, while she was having fun in a Latin dance till three o’clock in the morning. My discontentment is not only on this, but Kate, as a leader, did not blame her but chat with her about the dance scene! I kept myself silence because I understood in the last minute, uniting as a team is more important than condemnation. Nothing can or should be said in front of other group members. One more leadership characteristic I learn from HEWSO, point out and correct faults as quickly as possible.

Kate stayed in my room over night on that one of our project catching up last Friday. She asked me an interested questions: “You don’t have your parents photos?” I looked around my room, photos are everywhere, but are all my friends and me. A lot of people say I am very strong and independent. True. Since young, I don’t have close relationship with my parents. They had no intention on my life. What I had done, what I had decided, all came from my own judgement. Mistakes are unavoidable. In the state of confusion, frustration and helpless, I did not cry because I know no one will see it. My eventual change was brought up by his scold, although he did not really understand me and my situation. It was his repeated saying, “your parents have given you too much”, that offended me. I might be a bit spoiled, but I got into that state was not led by my parents.

Today was the first day of Orientation week for first year students. I was lucky enough to host a group of twelve B.A. students. Looking at their eager and excitation on the coming uni life, my first year memories caught in my mind. A mixed feeling arose: first year has always been innocence; come to my final year, sophistication has been coined. Uni life is as short as that I don’t have had enough fun. Anyhow, I will never forget such a great experience. In the new uni year, I don’t think I will have much time to involve into fun stuff such as CTG. More of my time will be occupied with searching for jobs and getting more practical experience before I enter the competitive workforce.

I am amazed to find a girl has the same name as me. In the new movie, Spanglish, the grandma role was played by Cloris Leachman, an infamous miscellaneous actress for many years. There is no excuse for me to watch to movie. At least I could flatter myself in front of others.

A perfect housewife

I was told that I was so much so attentive that rights to be a perfect housewife; while prudential of my mind set was great to be in modern corporate competition. For a long time, I have this ideal of life: pursuing a professional career before I retire as a housewife in my late 20s. Anyhow, ideal is the image that you could only hang in mind, reality requires everyone to accept what is out there and act accordingly.

A suspicious black suitcase had been laid on my couch for a long while. Curiously, I opened it yesterday and found my housemate’s laptop, which he asked me take care of before he went back to Taiwan a month ago! Luckily it didn’t get stolen within the last 30 days while our house was like a public gathering venue.

ABC news radio was reporting an insight investigation on Chinese mining industry. It was monstrously to believe the conditions of working in the underground mining field in western and inland China. As one of the worker said: “吃的是阳间饭,干的是阴间活.” Behind the curtain of economic broom in some eastern-coast cities, thousands of mining workers was buried under poverty and dangers of industry work.

Coffee was much needed as we were draining our brain on writing up the report; biscuit and assorted snacks were munching to release our stress nerves. Last minute work has never been productive.

Final Burn out

I have never and will ever work as crazy as what I did in the past two days. For the HEWSO project, the lag of team members’ commitments left Kate and me exhausted our talented brain cells to work against time to finish the final written report. Chocolate and coffee was consumed consistently as our energy saver. This project will inevitably fail, yet a good lesson for us to learn. At the learning stage, a failure brings in more values than a success one. The lesson has been learnt, I will have a more sophisticated view when the next opportunity comes.

After working on the HEWSO in the last 48 hours, I want nothing but sleep. G'night and dont dream of ABS matrix recruitment.

Any break? Nop, unfortunately

Extended the excitement from the exam paper, we were contending about the insurance problem while walking out the exam venue. Adrienne, another talented girl who always has H1, was so passionate about economics, moving around her hands in the air and drawing graphs to support her exam answer. For me, this was the best economics exam ever, at least I knew what the questions asked me to do. Got every questions on the right track, even though I did not have time to work out some answers. Hopefully I could get more than pass this time.

Two hours after the exam, I soon engaged in another intellectual mind thinking in our HEWSO project. I want to watch movie! I want to hang out with friends! I don’t even have time to show my courtesy to the new girl who just arrived from China. I feel guilty about that. However, at this time, I was extremely out of other social human interaction aside from HEWSO and SALP.

I was shocked this afternoon that I opened my kitchen cupboard and found nothing to eat. A soul had no dinner and breakfast, starving as you could imagine, I stormed out and bought myself a loaf of Swiss date & fig. Feeding my mouth with long-desired food, I was contented and started my afternoon with chocolate and intense discussion with two other HEWSO team members. We are in the last minutes in our projects, and found ourselves a slightly out of the right tracks. We committed another sleepless night to finish the 10-page report by Friday.

Grandma was sobbing in the phone. I knew she wanted to talk with me longer as she was so lonely without a friend and even a TV show to watch. No matter what, she still grasps her ideology that western country is always better than China; and she refuses to move back. Alas…I am not good at persuasion. At this stage of my filial piety, the only thing I could offer is listening.

Busy cutting and writing, I was doing my library photo exhibition the whole morning. Eventually, after a year of waiting, I finally get the 12-month South Lawn photo displayed in front of the my uni fellow students and staffs. A postcard is going to be designed this weekend. Hopefully, everything can be done before O’week next week so I can get my name known among the new students.

This summer in Melbourne is enjoyable, although I had been busy with a lot of commitments. I enjoyed the tranquil street in Christmas time; the mildness weather during the Dec/Jan period; benign sunshine on my skin. In fact, I feel a bit irritated when the others come back and share “my” ownership of Melbourne.

Things have to move on, people will come back have to come back. Campus will soon be crammed with students. A lot of them are young new faces, which were exactly the same as mine two years ago. My final experience of feeling old!

What a love?

I felt so sick before I started work. Two hours into work I was still drowsy from my three-hour afternoon nap. Caffeine warmed up my stomach and kept me awake in the following nights.

A touchy love story was seen during work. There was a gentle young man sitting at the end of outside dinning area. He told us not to serve him, because he was waiting for his girlfriend and he was not sure if she would come. Twenty minutes later, “I gave up”, said in his soft voice with weepy eyes. He must be heart-broken. Poor guy. Just a day after Valentines, love turns into a poison. What a love?!

A fatigued Valentine's day

There is no Valentine’s day concept marked in my single brain cell ever. Many people think I must have a lot of relationships or at least potential, as I play so hard in front of them. I have to confess, I am an isolator from the opposite sex; and I have not had a single Valentine’s celebration. Times have always been fed up with countless schedule, meetings and work. I left no time even for myself. This year is even worse, as exam is on the day after and a big report is due in a week. Moreover, after two sufferings from disappointment, I have no faith to trust any guys.

I was extremely exhausted on Valentine’s night. By the time I reached home after work, I could not have energy to speak. My fatigue carries on today so much so that I could concentrate on my practice exam paper. I wasted two hours sitting in front of my computer doing nothing, but researching for a nice template for my exhibited photo frames. I better go sleep for a few hours to regain my energy.

A healthy list

Chinese New Year celebration was getting the crowds in city, while I nested myself at my city-fringe home the whole day for boring numbers and graphs. On top of that, my stomach gets worse these days, that makes me have no motivation to go out and exercise my sport cells. What I had to keep my energy from dieing were non-tasted bread and cracker. These leavened crispy bites did no help but add worse symptoms. The positive thinking for this is, I could add one more item on my warning prohibited food list, which contains range of food that would wrack my digestion system.

I would have no more patience to our internet connection. I have spent an amount of money on buying hubs and lines stuff, plus countless time on inquiring incurred ongoing faulty. Digital has no empathy, so haven’t I. Let alone it die out, I have no further inquiry.

A year of rooster, what does it imply for? “After 21st, time slips away in a blink.” This was big C told me when she left Melbourne. True! True! Recollected to mind the memories we first met, she was just 21 with a degree and a dream. Four years has gone past, what she ends up with may be a foreseen of mine. Indeed, no matter what, time is still rolling forward at the same patch, and things are still need to be resolved.

During the time of mind relieving, I scratched a paper and listed the possible future pathways. Apparently there are three directions. I will not list here until I feel the time is appropriate. These ideas piece together my fragmented thoughts that has been lingering in mind for quite a while. They may not be achievable, yet there are possibilities.

Since the rating season start last week, several American good drama series have raise my interests. Desperate Housewife landed with excessive applauses from every media review. I found the story far less attractive than expected. It mirrors American Beauty in some way. A secret within four flesh vacuous women, no surprised than a classic home-watched drama. The other one was LOST. This is another tragedy story that reveals unexpected truth one by one using intervened story telling. The first two episodes really grasp my nerve. I could not power off the VCR but finished watching the taped episodes. Tragedy and secret is always an attractive combination to me.

I am totally stress out right at the moment. I feel like kicking everything that barrier in front of my sight. A few matters stack up in my brain:

• Exam is coming next Wednesday, I am not sure wether I have enough time to do the revision. Only one practice exam, which is damn tough. Even the tutors don’t know how to do without looking back the answers.
• The ABS report is due before Tuesday. I totally commit to this thing and don’t want to let the whole team down. The problem is, I can not do much more on it before Wednesday.
• My art work exhibition must be put up before O-week.
• Planning for SALP meeting must be done before 21st Feb as well.
• I will not work in Asialink anymore, as my supervisor resigns and the whole corporate program is put in haul. I was shocked when I arrived in the office this morning. It was disappointed not because I have no work there anymore, but two months of work is drain put in vain makes me feel useless. Anyway, I know life is unpredictable, as it always is. Maybe this lost implies something should change in my career path. My supervisor is heading in a government position in media & publication field, which is where my real interest and strength lies. She is more than happy to take me on board once she fits into the new job. That would be more challenge than working in Asialink. Frankly, I did not learn much within Asialink, even though it is a well-funded organization. It is not the organization that I would prefer to work in. My colleagues are nice; however, the corporate culture is a sort of lax. I did not find much challenge or excitement in the programs they organised. Opportunities are out there, is just the matter of capturing and the way you conduct to capture them.

I am grumpy to kill someone now. Better leave the house and vent my energy in swimming.

The mini Apprentice

HEWSO is a mini version of “the Apprentice”. One task assigned to four teams with limited time. Team members have to tackle problems with the best solutions after a month of intensive research and discussions. Our team just had a five-hour meeting as a milestone halfway into the competition. A long discussion for ideas and solutions gathered, the central part of the final report had been developed. It is amazed to see different people have different talents in someway, the way to work out how to compromise and utilize are essential to the success of the team.

I am going to work on my arts exhibition in the library soon after the exam. Meeting with the library arts coordinator, surprisingly who was a friend of mine couple years back in our evening French class, and was assured a space in the library. The rest is just how I am going to present my photos and writing creative comments. I start liking working on creative stuff since last year. This is the incentive my degree gives to me. However, in the summer semester, I was confined with set economic calculations which devastated my creative cells.

A year for rooster

I have been awfully busy these days. My time is fed up with economic theories, practice exams and endless meetings for HEWSO. Kate and I are not gonna to sleep tonight if we can not get our planning for the project done.

On this New Year’s Day, I got up at 6:45 given that I swamped to bed at 1:40 in the morning, as I am going to have a casual meeting with ABS (Australian Bureaus of Statistics) HR director. Under the aroma of café’s brewage, Peter, the director, gave us a lot of valuable inside and hints for the competition. Despite we had a long list of questions, smart as she is, Kate linked the questions smoothly without even a pause between different topics. On top of that, two recorders were laid on the coffee table to make our “journalistic” interview look noticeably professional. After an hour’s of intensive question bombing, both Kate and me were pretty content with our performance and prepared for a sleepless New Year’s Day.

My head was swirling while I was waiting for the library computer to start up in the late afternoon. Since morning, I did not even have a time to take a big deep breath to relax. Rushed from city to uni for lecture; then went back home in haste to scuff a quick meal; scurried for tute; finally could sit down and rush to write the interview script before our group meeting tomorrow. I knew I would definitely gonna to burn out at the end of the day. A wiser way to relief myself is to exercise. So, I left the piles of work behind, and took a two-hour break to attend the “hip-hop” dance class. Get my cells motivated boosts up my working efficiency a lot. Ready for the second part of the day with vigorous.

I am having a post-PSM syndrome, which I could not consume any food. Within the last three days, I feel so sick of any food (even water) that I had only one meal per day, that was I forced myself to take in.

Quiet busy world

Our house suddenly falls into an unwonted quiet after all the temp housemates suddenly vacate to their new home. Although I have not yet lived here for a long time, affections have already been developed for every person lives or lived in. They are all wonderful with distinct personalities. So far, I am enjoying my life of living in a big house.

I was shocked to see flames are still in our stove when I came back after work tonight. Someone must dismiss from the kitchen without realising what a dangerous was left behind.

Now is 3am in the morning in Melbourne. Two reasons that force me to stay up late: one is the stress from my HEWSO project; the other is I had taken a shot while I was at work. The little Italian boy, who works in the bar, gave me his innovated shot – bailey, congtrunte, vodka and coke. He deceived me with “low alcoholic” homemade cock-tail. D… I did not get drunk, yet I could not go to sleep before I finish my report research is done.

Happy Chinese New Year!

In a wonderful shiny day, the first temp housemate moved out. A mixed feeling of sweet sorrow rose from my gut. Although I don’t really like this guy, we had wonderful times hanging out and partying together. He came in just at the right time; the time while we were both free and stessless. A good year is waiting ahead for us to achieve our goals! It is time for us to go on with our life. Hope by the time we reunion, we have achieved what we determine to today – a successful lawyer to him, and a happy girl to me.

Finally, I got my long-drawn photos developed. Half are photos I took in Bangkok last year, which will fill in my designed Thailand venture trip album. The other half was the same angle shoot on Uni south lawn that I took on the 30th of every month. I am going to call the library gallery tomorrow, and try my luck to get these two, the only two, of my creativities exhibited. Even I could not get a space on the library wall, I will feel content with my consistent work on these twelfth shoots.

Our HEWSO competition is going pretty good. Everyone in our team is so dedicated to the task. Tones of ideas and information are presented and discussed on the table during our three-hour meeting, which began at 9:00am Sunday morning. I am not the only who has tight schedule every day and week; every team members are working crazy. Sing, our idea trigger, is undertaking one summer subject, plus one marketing project assigned from her postgraduate study and a part-time work in the community. Our leader Kate is the craziest. She tells us that she goes to sleep at 10:00pm and wakes up at 2:00am in the morning, EVERYDAY! Taking the role as a leader, the first thing comes across to you is to sacrifice. Look back at what I did CTG, there was no distinguish between day and night. You only know you should have rest is that you get everything scheduled and all the planning done before next meeting. However, nothing can be better to see your work is appreciated and things go on the right track smoothly. What you get is what you do. If I don’t take summer school, I will definitely take on the leader role for this project.

Happy Chinese New Year! I am slumping into my chair and digesting the food consumed in our family’s New Year dinner banquet. Nothing new, except for my oldest cousin got a scholarship and starts her secondary education in a private school. They continue to have the same old conversation on their children’s education and family life over the dinning table. Grandparents are older; Aunty Mabel is over-obsessive with her daughter’s education; and two boy-cousins become more wayward.

A havoc weather

Dominant? Dominated? Throughout the two-hour economic lecture, we were taught the differences between these two game strategies. Game theory is an interesting topic. As the strategies described in the theory are often used in the real world as in bargaining, with people may or may not realised.

We are in the hottest month of the year, yet on Wednesday, Melbourne flipped into the coldest February ever. Snow even dumped onto Alpine resort! We could even ski in the summer time. What a freaky weather. After hitting 30 degree in the morning, black clouds followed with wild storm swept across Victoria. Huge rain poured from the sky around-the-clock, and brought the wintry cold into the city. The wet wild weather condition drowns the Melbourne streets and drenches to everyone’s skin.

I had a big breakfast soon as I woke up this morning. It was an all bread meal. As always, I could not resist my affection towards bread; I kept taking pieces from the bakery bag in snatches. The whole loaf had gone before I finished reading the morning newspaper! A truly bread lover.

lag behind

Currently, there are about six emails in my inbox waiting for me to reply. Gee…I am so lag behind of replying. Some of them have been there for a month. As several of them take time to think about in terms of myself reflection of life purpose and the way of leading life, I just put them off again and again. However, Lunar new year is knocking at the door, I have to send my greetings to these valuable people in my life. Thus, no more procrastinating!

My friends and ex-colleagues in China keep asking me the date I will go back. I could only give them a vague answer, “probably next year, after I graduate and everything is settled”. I know I will have minimal chance to go back next year. Graduation, applying for PR, searching for jobs and moving to Sydney will block out my holiday time. In the previous times of going back, I was mainly for shopping and holiday; now I am long for seeing my perpetual friends.