I love the blue sky

Sunday, August 23, 2009
The Man Who Can't Get Married

I recently finished watching the above K-drama which I really, really enjoyed. Now that its run has ended a few weeks ago, I miss watching the characters.

It was different from the usual cliched comedies. This was quirky, lighthearted and hilarious. (Read synopsis on Mysoju.) I love all the characters in the drama, not to mention the three leads (Ji Jin Hee, Uhm Jung Hwa and Kim So Eun) who played Cho Jae Hee, Jang Moon Jung and Jung Yoo Jin respectively. They kept me in stitches at every episode, especially the comically awkward and blossoming relationship between Cho Jae Hee and Jang Moon Jung. Fantastic chemistry! I intend to buy this serial when I can get my hands on it.

Unfortunately, its soundtrack isn't as appealing, though a couple of songs are nice, just not outstanding enough.

And I wish... I hope... there will be a sequel to this. Perhaps, The Man Who Finally Got Married? :D

jOyZ blogged at 3:43 PM

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Sunday, August 16, 2009
More Updates

Clearly, I haven't been able to blog as regularly. It wasn't because I was terribly busy or that I was being lazy. Strangely, my need for blogging seems to have diminished somewhat now that I'm in Melbourne. I'm thinking it could be due to the fact that I've stopped working and am truly away from it all. But the weeks are zipping by. I've been here for 6 weeks. I wish time would slow down so that I could savour my moments here.

That doesn't mean I'm having a worry-free time here though. To be honest, I'm struggling quite a bit with studies, having not done academic reading nor writing for more than a decade. I'm taking a while to adjust to reading difficult journals and papers written by brilliant people in the academia world. It's indeed a tremendous change from reading error-filled essays written by my pupils. Hehs.

Like my pupils, I have assignments to complete now. At the moment, there's an assignment due this coming Wednesday on Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and it's tougher than setting comprehension papers. There are 9 questions based on a terribly lengthy reading and we're expected to write a paragraph (no one- or two-liner answer, mind you) for every answer - just for that one miserable mark. Armed with coloured highlighters and pens (to paraphrase whatever that I've read), I'm still ploughing through the reading, at times wondering if whatever that I've read got registered in my puny brain. Yes, indeed, I'm feeling the stress - which explains why I'm finally blogging after about 3 weeks of disappearance.

Anyways, I'm not going to blog in great detail about what happened the past few weeks. I'll just post some photographs which I've snitched, again, from some of my friends' photo albums on Facebook. (PS: By the way, if you're one of my pupils or ex-pupils, kindly refrain from adding me on Facebook because I've kind of stopped adding ex-pupils - with the exception of certain really 'old' batches. Sorry!)

Last weekend was pretty fun. On Saturday evening, we were at a friend's place for steamboat dinner. I met some familiar faces and some new faces. It was an evening of eating (oh gosh, the tomyam soup was shiokalicious!), chatting, photo-snapping and Jenga!

See how focussed we were.

The whole lot of us at the steamboat party :D

The following evening, some 500 Singaporean (and non-Singaporean) undergraduate and postgraduate students from UniMelb, RMIT and Monash gathered at Sidney Myer Asia Centre to celebrate Singapore's 44th birthday and to say the pledge at 8.22pm SGT (10.22pm Melbourne time). It was a riot! Ha!

First we had to queue up just to get into the building. This was the length of the queue by the time we arrived. Apparently, some people were already queueing up as early as 5pm to get the limited NDP bags which were specially flown in from back home!

This was the third queue we had to overcome for the spread of yummy Singapore food - after the queue to register our names. I think the picture of my overloaded dinner plate is floating around somewhere.

After queue number 4, we were finally in the auditorium, waiting to watch the live screening of NDP 2009. :D

I didn't bother taking anymore pictures after that. It was too much of a hassle taking the camera out from and putting it back into the bag. The organisers stopped showing NDP 2009 after the march pass and there were a few performances, some quizzes and a few rounds of lucky draw before we tuned back at around 10.20pm just in time to say the pledge and sing the national anthem together with fellow Singaporeans at home and around the rest of the world.

This was taken just before we left.

Oh, the following are pictures of the pasta I've been whipping up in my miniscule apartment. Once, the fire alarm in my apartment went off during a particularly smoky cooking session! My subsequent stir-frying attempts were done by running to and from the window balcony whenever I removed the pan cover so that the 'smoke' from the food would float out of my window. Hilarious. Come to think of it, I suspect the tenant living directly below my apartment probably does the same thing. There were times when the smell of cooked food from elsewhere floated into my room. LOL.

My version of non-creamy pasta, but with loads of chopped garlic and generous serving of pork.

This was the dish that triggered the fire alarm. LOL. I was stir-frying chopped garlic, mushrooms, green vegetables and sliced sausages. Aglio olio with meat asian-style! =D

Right. Enough blogging for now. It's time to return to my dreaded readings. SIGH.

jOyZ blogged at 8:07 PM

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