Friday, September 29, 2006

Extra-ordinary Bread

Chris bought these breads home.

Two different brands of breads.

From far, we couldn't spot any difference between those two loaves of bread.

Let's take a closer look.

Huh? Untouched by human hand?

Who touched the bread?!

I have no idea! Maybe it's him...

Original photo from www.ism.ac.jp
The Orang Utan!

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Seoul BBQ Cafe

From the name of the cafe, we can roughly guess the cafe serves Korean cuisine.

Walk in please...

Danny and I decided to try this cafe out since it is strongly recommended by his sis.

Inside the cafe/restaurant.

It was empty by the time we reached there. 7.30p.m. is considered late for dinner in Perth. Normally the restaurant is packed with people.

Meat Combo.

This was Danny's order. Meat Combo which costs him Aud$8.90. The dish came with salad, rice, bean sprout and soup.

Quite ordinary though.

Meat Combo is a dish with 2 choices of barbeque meat. Either it's beef, chicken or pork. Danny ordered the beef and pork and I tried both the meat. Edible but not as nice as I thought. If I was to rate it, I'll only give it 2 and a half stars out of 5.

My order.

I ordered Chilli Squid which costed me Aud$7.50.

Lots of chilli!

The Chilli Squid turned out to be better than the Meat Combo. It's something like squid ring but with lots of "sambal-like" chilli as topping. 4 stars out of 5 as it's not as hot as I thought. ;)

Look out for their logo.

I gobbled everything within 10 minutes. Maybe I was too hungry then.

That's the address, phone number and map.

If anyone wants to give it a try, that's how you can get there. Seoul BBQ Cafe has two branches; Shafto Lane and Murray Street. The cafe I'm showing here is the Shafto Lane's branch.

Overall, it's a worth to try Korean cuisine although the cafe doesn't serve Kimchi (Korean dish).

Saturday, September 23, 2006

Postman For A Day

I was supposed to be at Kojonup today with my host family. However, the trip was cancelled due to some reasons.

Kojonup is a small town located down south Perth. It is two hours drive from Perth.

Bus ticket has been issued.

The weekend hospitality trip was organised by Council of International Student Western Australia (CISWA). The trip, which I was looking forward to, let us know more about the cultures of the locals. Danny and Chris was supposed to go for the trip, too.

Anyway, although I couldn't go for the trip, I still had something to do. Remember the Spring Feast which I have mentioned earlier? It is only about 1 and a half week from now! I, as the committee of the event, am assigned to distribute flyers with some other committees.

Multicultural Week's events.

Spring Feast is actually only one of the events of the Multicultural Week. The Multicultural Week starts from 2nd to 6th of October. There are loads of other activities going on that week. The biggest event among all, is the Spring Feast.

Along Broadway.

Danny and I had to distribute the flyers for all the houses at Broadway (a street near the uni).

Not all the houses here with one mail box only. The houses here are split into several units so that they can be rent out to the students.

That's why if you own a house near the uni, you can earn a lot.

No junk mail?

Our flyers of course are not junk mails. So, we can just slide the flyers into the mail boxes.

We manage to distribute all the flyers within 1 hour. It's fun to become a postman for a day! :)

Just to remind everyone in Perth here. The University of Western Australia's Spring Feast will be on 5th of October (Thursday) from 6p.m. till late! There will be lots of fun. Bring along your friends and family! Spread the words! :)

Araluen Botanic Park

Sorry for the lack of updates these days as I am busy with my assignments and projects. Anyhoo, here is the tulips' post I promised.

Last Saturday, a bunch of friends and I went to Araluen Botanic Park with the International Student Services (ISS). We started off from uni at around 8:30a.m.

Inside the lousy bus.

Initial schedule was to arrive at the park at 10:30a.m but, we were lost thus it took us another 35 minutes to get there. Thanks to the driver who didn't check the location of the park before departing.

The entrance of the park.

"Araluen is a passive recreation park designed for the enjoyment of people who wish to experience the exotic gardens and tranquility of this unique jarrah-line valley" (quoted from the leaflet).

Affordable entrance fees.

Since ISS's activities are subsidised by guild, we only need to pay as little as Aud$5 per person including transport. Cheap right? A big thank you to ISS.

The main attraction of the park at that time was the tulips. Between the last two week of August and the beginning of the first two weeks of September every year, tulips start to bloom.

You want to know how beautiful are the tulips? I can gurantee you that you will give a two thumbs up after you have looked at the photos.

Pink tulips.

Lots of black tulips.

Another angle of the black tulips.

White tulips.

Red tulips.

So, how are the tulips? ;) Too bad we went there a bit late. The tulips already started to wilt. A piece of advice from me. Make sure you go to the park at the right time to enjoy the full bloom of tulips!

Aparts from tulips, there are other flowers for your viewing pleasure. Sit back and enjoy the photos.








There are plenty of flora in the park. You can see bees busy collecting pollen for honey.

*TOOT* *TOOT*

If you are too lazy to walk, there's a little "train" to take you around. But I don't know whether they incure any charge for that or not. I suggest you to walk, of course, to enjoy the flowers and to exercise!

A breakfast or lunch in the park?

It's so enjoy and relax to have your breakfast or lunch in the park which is full of flora.

Waterfall.

The air in the park is so fresh and clean.

Who is more handsome? Both?

Of course, we didn't forget our cam-slutting session.

King of the park.

I actually don't know if we are allowed to sit on that or not. But most probably they allow us to do so. If not, I already ended up paying hundred or thousands of dollars for the fine.

A well designed pond.

Do you see the reflection of the structure? I love it. It's just so wonderful.

I know I'm short...

I'm not short ok? Actually it's just that Chris is tall! :P

YO YO YO!

You can bring your own lunch and lie down on the ground to enjoy the beauty of the nature.

After some time walking and taking hundreds of photos, it was time to walk towards the exit. We had to gather with the others before we took the bus home.

Initial-D for the gnomes?

This is actually a skeleton of a car. It was modified to turn it into a mini garden.

At the back of the car.

There are little gnomes and some plants behind the car. For that reason, the mini garden is named, "Gnomes Mini Garden".

A group photo with some of my friends.

Chris was not in the photo as he was the cameraman!

Brinjals' visit to Araluen Botanic Park?

Before we hopped on to the bus, we saw all the elders with their purple-ish clothes. They were so cute! :)

Satisfied with the trip?

It was an enjoyable trip. That's the first time I saw so much tulips. I'll sure visit the park again next year. Till then...

Monday, September 18, 2006

"First Bitter Then Sweet"

For the past two weeks before my mid semester break, I was trying very hard to earn some money. I went to sit for the paid experiments conducted by the psycho psychology students in my uni.

My temporary "office".

I spent about one to two hours everyday in my office for the two weeks.

Name of my company.

I was paid about Aud$10 an hour just to sit for the experiments conducted by the students. That's considered a lot compare to working in the oriental stores which have tougher work but was paid the same amount of money.

Inside my office.

Most of the rooms in my office are for the white ratsstudents to sit for the experiments conducted by the psychology students.


One of the experiments.

The objectives of most experiments are just to determine how a human memorising their stuff and how human categorising things. You just need to sit there, stare at the monitor, think for a while and click at the mouse for one hour and you will be reimburse for your time and travel expenses. As easy as ABC, right? ;)

After numbers of experiments, I finally managed to buy this...

An external hard drive and a flashdrive.

Actually Danny bought that flashdrive to replace my old flashdrive which he has accidentally broken.

Just an ordinary hard drive.

It is a Maxtor 250gb IDE external hard drive which costs me RM350.

Happy family.

I need an extra hard drive to accomodate my photos, songs and programmes. My laptop's hard drive could no longer support my extensive use of space.

Sandisk Cruzer Mini 1gb flashdrive.

I actually contributed some amount of money to upgrade it to a 1gb flashdrive. It comes with two extra caps and a neck strap.

A simple designed flashdrive.

This flashdrive retails for RM87 in Kuala Lumpur.

Goodbye to my old Kingston Datatraveller 256mb flashdrive.

I have to say goodbye to my 1 and a half year flashdrive which serves me well. I have to thanks Brian for helping me to bring these two stuff all the way from Kuala Lumpur. Thanks Brian!

Actually some of the money of the hard drive comes from my dad but of course, most of it comes from me. The moral of this story is "first bitter then sweet" ("xian ku hou tian" in Mandarin). It means, at first, you have to work hard before you get to enjoy in the end. :)

P/s : Stay tuned for my next post about my tulips trip.

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