CooL cHriStMaS...

got roped in by michelle to do some charity gift wrapping thing at borders last week... so it was just me and prisy wearing the christmas hat thing sitting there asking the customers who passed by after paying whether they would like some gift wrapping done if they make a small donation... and at first it started out slow, nobody wants any gift wrapping, but then after like an hour or so... people started coming to wrap their books, cds, and calendars... and before this, i have never had to wrap so many things before, so needless to say, i did a really crappy job, i was expecting the customer to tell me to stop wrapping most of the time... well, no one did thank god, but i figured that's bcos they are not paying much to get their gifts wrapped and it's for charity... well... not sure if i would do it again next year... I would not want myself to wrap my gifts...

worked over the weekend and on christmas eve... was expecting to see crowds of people queuing up, but surprisingly it was pretty quiet other than a few long queues once in a while... i guess people are waiting for later when the prices of the fresh food get marked down...

prisy and i went karaoke on christmas day... the city was pretty quiet as compared to normal even though chinatown was open... but we did not hang around, we sang and then went straight home... had bbq for dinner that day... the weather has been not too hot actually which was good, cos that meant that the flies stayed away... watched movies after... ghost rider, stardust, ratatouille... i actually thought ratatouille was nicer than stardust... but i definitely do not want so many rats cooking my food... that's just wrong...

Ho... Ho... HO...

last week was really shitty... i am really hating the placement right now... all bcos of my big mouth and now my whole christmas break is ruined... and i got the email saying that my ethics did not get approved... another thing to worry about... now i have to wait till february before the ethics commitee meet up again... no big plans for christmas... we dun even celebrate it anyway... to me it's just like any other public holiday... still remember back when i was in singapore... during christmas we would drive to orchard and then walk down orchard road... just strolling and taking in the festive atmosphere and the decorations... but these recent years we have not been doing that anymore...
and i went back to the hair salon last week to recurl my hair cos the curls did not even last for a week, so they agreed to do it again for me free... and it's now a week and my hair is back to straight again... how annoying...
anyway... merry christmas everyone... hope your christmas is better than mine...

OnE WeEk tO XmAs...

last week was uncle's birthday so we went to this cinema called the Ritz at randwick... it was quite an old cinema and the movie we watched was Beowulf... other than the movie having really good graphics, i do not recommend anyone going to watch the movie... no plot and no storyline... oh well... after that, we drove to broadway to this german restaurant called Una's... and most of the menu was chicken schnitzel... i got the crispy fried one which was quite nice and quite a big portion... prisy got the same one but with some spicy sauce spread over the chicken, and i think that made the chicken less crispy after awhile and they put alot of the sauce...

worked over the weekend... nothing much happening except i am working on christmas and new year's eve... which will definitely be crowded and something i did not do last year... i still cannot get over the fact that if not for the placement... i would be in singapore already... the one good thing is that the weather has not been too hot lately and hopefully it does not get hotter and the flies stay far far away...

placement is starting to suck... cos 1) this placement requires me to talk alot, communicate and try to engage the clients into conversations and it is quite hard for me cos i am not a natural talker and i can't seem to relate to the stuff that seemed to interest them... 2) they smoke ALLthe time... in fact, that's what they do most of the time... every day i come home feeling so smelly and i am breathing in so much second hand smoke, it's really bad... 3) and I have no idea what the lit review thing requires us to do and apparently it's very difficult to look for related articles on the databases... and today was the halfway assessment and the feedback i got was not that great... so to sum it all up... i am not enjoying the placement at the moment...

and anna told me she got ethics approval... another thing for me to worry abt...

HAirY exPeriENCe...

went to this japanese salon in the city to curl my hair... i showed the lady there a picture of the type of curls i wanted and said okay... she said digital perm will last longer than normal perm so i thought i will give it a try... so i sat there not knowing what to expect... she trimmed my hair alittle and then gave it a rinse, and then put some gel thing on my hair... then put glad wrap over my hair and i had to sit under the hot circular thing for like 15 minutes... then after she removed the glad wrap... rinse my hair again... and then used alot of rollers to curl my hair... and then after putting the rollers, she put like this white cloth thing on each roller and a stick thing into each roller... and then she brought over this machine, and attached the electrodes onto the rollers... i looked like a freak... so i sat there for a good half an hour... and the whole time my head was hurting from the heat... it was really hot... and i kept fidgeting till one of the hairdressers there came over and asked me if i was alright... it was actually quite painful... and then this other hairdresser came and applied some liquid onto my hair and allowed it to drip onto a bowl resting on my shoulders... and he did it twice, and i have to sit there and wait again for another 20 minutes... and then finally, he removed the rollers from my hair and i felt so relieved... the rollers were really quite heavy... then went for another rinse again... sat back down again and waited for like 20 minutes before she came and blow dry my hair... i was quite happy when i came out of the salon...

however, when i decided to go curl my hair... i should have done my research first cos i did not know that there was so much maintenance to keep the curls and now... the curls are almost gone... ahhh... what should i do... and then i looked up on the internet and realised that after washing my hair, i have to twirl it and blowdry it at the same time to maintain the curls... which i did not know... and you also have to use products... which i dun really want to... and you dun comb your hair... so now... i am trying to keep the curls whatever that is left... alamak help...

Went to curl my hair on saturday with prisy in the city in a japanese salon... really expensive but I thought I should do something different with my hair after having straight hair since forever... after curling my hair, realised that I did not consider the consequences of having to maintain the curls...

And this was the result of the hailstorm that we had last sunday... can you see the smashed window and the hailstones on the carpet??!! it was really scary... I never ever want to go through that experience again...

SCArEd liKE hELL...

ohmigod... yesterday was one of the most scariest days of my life... i was about to leave for work and everyone else was out when it started raining really heavily... and then minutes later... i heard loud banging on the roof... and i thought oh it's hailing... so i went to the window to check it out, and to my utter disbelief and horror, the size of the hail was like a tennis ball... and it was coming down really fast, the rain started raining even more heavily... and the hail started hitting on the windows... and a few seconds later... i heard crashing... when i went into the living room where the sound was coming from... the windows were smashed and glass were all over the place, hailstones were coming into the room... and there was a huge gaping hole in the window... i was so scared, i was actually shaking when i called uncle... and i hid in the laundry room... i did not dare to go into the living room... after awhile, i decided to go check it out... the hail stopped but rain was still coming down... there was nothing i could do except try to prevent the carpet from being soaked... and the whole area was covered with hailstones the size of tennis balls... i started picking the stones and pieces of broken glass up and wait for uncle and auntie to come home...

it was really bad and it has never happened before... apparently it only happened in certain areas, ours including... our neighbours' windows and cars were damaged as well... i was so glad that i did not leave for work early like I originally planned to... otherwise I cannot imagine what would happen...

PP4...

first week of placement... survived... some of the things that i realised after the first week at macquarie hospital... it is quite different from my other placements... 1) in my previous placements, i only have one supervisor and most of the time, i just followed him/her wherever and do whatever they tell me to do... this time, bcos we have one supervisor but he is shared among the four of us... and although it is considered a hospital placement, but it is actually a half clinical work and half lit review placement... and we are required to visit other mental health community settings as well... like yesterday, we have to make our own way all the way to this mental health place called pioneer clubhouse... in manly... and it was pouring... and when we got there, the person in charge actually asked if i could go pull out a bunch of lettuce for her in the garden and wash the toilets... i was so surprised... i just looked at her... thinking to myself... did i really just heard what i thought??!! insane... in the end, someone else did the plucking of the lettuce and i had to go wash the toilets... ahhh annoying... i really hate it when they ask us to go travel to all these other places and what if i dun have a car??!! it's so stupid... and another task that we had to do was pretend we had schizophrenia and catch a bus to collect some stuff at centrelink... and we have to act like we are hearing voices, laughing by ourselves, and acting suspiciously... but cos it was pouring that day, the other student and I decided to drive there... and our supervisor found out and wants us to redo it... so freaking annoying...
sometimes i wish this was just a straightforward placement... without having to do all the extra stuff... and we only have access to two computers... but there are 4 of us... anyway, everything is not going so smoothly at the moment... hopefully, things will become better in the coming weeks...