It's a windy day. As I braved through the wind, I could see some fallen tree branches on the ground all over the university campus. Those are HUGE branches, there was even one tree that was completely uprooted.
They decided to cordon off the area where the fallen branches are.
The funny thing is, fallen tree branches are not dangerous anymore, as there's no longer any branch above the cordoned area, and nobody is going to "accidentally" trip over the huge branches on the floor. So why do they cordon off the area? Shouldn't they cordon off the other trees instead, in case the other branches fall down?
Eric will protest vehemently what I am going to say: I am in love with the weather in Malaysia.
For the same 32 degree Celsius, the Sun above Malaysia somehow showers a different kind of warmth compared to the sun on the Australian sky. In Australia the radiation literally pierces your skin (partly contributing to the high skin cancer incidence there), but in Malaysia the Sun is more comfortable despite the same temperature. I haven't even compared it with the 41-degree days where it feels like a stove when the sun has set.
I am starting to understand why people come to Malaysia for the beach.
After 343 days in Melbourne, I am leaving for home tomorrow and will spend 27 days there. I am not going to write a reflection about the last year, at this moment I am just thinking of... how I should carry the cherries and mangoes.
Bye 41-degree Melbourne and hi 33-degree Malaysia! :)
Happy New Year everyone! 2007 ended with the hottest day of the year (41 degree Celsius in Melbourne), while 2008 arrived with resplendent fireworks in Melbourne.
It's the first time I celebrate New Year's Day in overseas, so I joined the 350,000-strong crowd at the Yarra Riverside to watch the fireworks. Honestly it's not as nice as I expected, partly because we were standing right beneath the explosion. The couple in front of us who couldn't stop cumbu-cumbuing throughout the firework didn't help either. When people counted 10, 9, 8,... 3, 2, 1, they started kissing each other on the mouth. Haha.
The scorching heat also made me feel rather uncomfortable. At night, first we were having dinner in Brandon's house (whose cooking by the way was absolutely mouth-watering). We had already gone quite clammy inside his house. When we walked from Brandon's house all the way to the city, the temperature was still at the mid thirties even though it's 10.30 at night.
In the city, hundred thousands of people literally turned the whole Swanston Street into an open-air dancing floor. Whichever direction I laid my eyes on, there were people dancing, shaking and jumping and clogging the whole street. It's as though a party was going on except that there was no alcohol allowed. Interestingness aside, Melbourne's New Year Eve countdown is not the safest place you want to end up in. The crowd and the half-drunken people can make you feel rather insecure. Regardless, celebration in Melbourne is still much more civilised than Malaysia where people simply spray each other with ribbons and chemical snowflakes and pass it off as fun. It's annoyingly meaningless.
Let's hope that the year 2008 brings out all the best in everyone, and may we all live in bliss and content with good health! :)
The temperature in Melbourne right now is 39 degree Celcius!!! I was walking outside just now, and it was literally a sauna even under the shade.
Winson said my enzymes must be denatured by now. I agree.
Update: After two hours it went straight down to 26 degree Celcius because change of direction of the winds. Okay now I am a formal convert of the "four seasons in a day" saying in Melbourne.
Whenever I stop posting for a few consecutive days, it's always been indicative of a busy life or procrastination. Surprisingly, this time it's the former reason. Since Chinese New Year, I have been rather busy in studies and extracurricular activities. Studies are the uninteresting part, certainly; but the extracurricular stuff has been rather fun.
For the past week, I have been participating in the preparation of the Fotoholics booth for Orientation Days. Basically Fotoholics is a photography club in Melbourne University which was established one year ago. During the Orientation days, there were two days allocated for clubs and societies where all clubs went on their fronts to recruit new members. So we set up a nice exhibition booth with gorgeous pictures, badges and name cards; but the main attraction was the giant cardbox camera which we carried around the university trying to catch some glances from the naive freshmen. We walked and talked under the sun to entice attention from our potential members. It was such a success that at the end of the first day we were running out of member application forms. On my part, I had a lot of fun bringing the huge-ass camera around and ambushing strangers.
So off to the much awaited pictures. Chinese New Year in Melbourne:
Gong Xi Fa Cai! In the morning, Yong Chin, Xuan Ni and I went to a "new year brunch" in Malaysian Hall. It was organized by Sze Mei, Ee Syn, Chong and other residents. It's the first time I went to the Malaysian Hall, and being there in the CNY kind of cured my home sickness a bit.
They even folded some fishes with Ang Pow! Way to go for a CNY celebration. We didn't even put up any decoration except Yong Chin and Wee Loon who wrote some 对联 for their rooms. :)
And finally, there's a 福 tiled with Ang Pow at the entrance of Malaysian Hall! Gorgeous.
After the nice brunch in Malaysian Hall, we went to the Chinatown. As you can see, there weren't many places to go in Melbourne during Chinese New Year, so as expected Chinatown was again at its peak crowd capacity. Chinese and Angmohs from all walks of life thronged to watch the event of the day - lion dance performances.
What I figured to be thousands of people were gathering to watch four lions do something which I couldn't quite figure out. Dawned upon me was a perpetual question that always lingered in my mind - basically with such a large crowd, only the first three rows of people would get to see the real thing, so what are the rest of people doing there? :P
This is a short video clip of what the lions were doing. It's nothing special actually, just something we never see in Malaysia.
So you might ask, how did I get to take the pictures of the crowd from such a vantage point? This is the answer - we went up to the top floor of a multi-storey parking building which was located right beside the Chinatown. Captured in the picture are the people on the floors below us. :)
The lion dance ended with the lions revealing the calligraphy that says "龙马精神". There are many other pictures, do view them in my photo album in Flickr.
It's beyond me why people would come to see lion dance and stuff in Chinatown when the sun was literally burning them. While the thermometer reached 38 degree Celsius on the CNY (and the CNY eve as well, actually), all we see were exuberant crowds who visited various booths with an array of goods and services.
This was an evidence of how thirsty people must have been. It used to be the Slurpee dispenser in 7-eleven.
We weren't thirsty but we went to pee. It's an obscure public toilet in Chinatown where a character "L" was suspiciously missing.
After Chinatown, we took a train to visit Ka Lip's house. Due to unknown circumstances, I don't have any picture taken there. However, do read about our visit to Ka Lip's house in a fantastic post written by Jian Wey who also went there. In one word, the visit was FUN. It was doubly meaningful as it's our first visit to his house since we knew him two years ago. His family was so hospitable, and until now I still drool when I think of the food we had there! :P
In short, CNY in Melbourne was interesting but I wouldn't want to spend my time here every year. It was a bit commercialised, and apart from the two-day show in Chinatown and Crown Casino, there wasn't that much of an atmosphere at all. And obviously all of that was made worse by our distance from home. On such a special day, our family is who we want to be with, no matter how interesting or mundane it might be. Yes we did have a celebration with friends over here, and in the process we gained some special experience; but at the end of the day all we thought of was home. I called home at night and all I saw was dad, mum, brother and sisters walking by in the little webcam window. It was bustling with activities as New Year songs played in the background. A tinge of melancholy swept over me as the thought of me being 7000 km away gripped my heart. And to think of the vivid possibility that I won't be at home for two out of three CNY in the coming three years...
It was a short-lived CNY. The celebration was actually over on the first day itself as we went back to routine life on the next day. To those who are still celebrating, Happy Chinese New Year; and to Hokkien Lang, Happy Jade Emperor's Birthday for tonight!
The past few days were the coldest since I came to Melbourne... The temperature has been hovering around zero degree Celsius for the past few days, and as I am typing this the temperature as shown by my forecastfox is 1 degree Celsius. I am not using any heater for the moment, but I think I may have to start using one very soon. My quilt, windbreaker and the adipose tissue is no longer enough to shield me from the freezing air.
Yesterday night I went out with a few friends to eat Gelati (Italian Ice Cream)... Well, it isn't the best thing to do in the winter, but I went for the outing anyway.
It didn't feel normal as I walked along the streets in about 5 degree celcius. To be exact, I was feeling very tired, which was totally abnormal since yesterday was Monday. I tried to reassure myself that it was just some psychological effect and it would go away when I wake up today for school.
I woke up at 8.20 when Eng Kiat called me on handphone. Darn it, I overslept again. And guess what... I was still as tired as a dog after 7 hours sleep. I went for lectures nonetheless, but the tiredness just wouldn't go away. There are only two lectures today, but all the biochemistry and metabolism thing was perfect for haunting me and making me even more mentally exhausted.
Tell me what sickness that is, fatigue without a fever or the smell of acetone? Biopsychosocial factors, anyone?
It's been getting a bit capricious recently... When the holidays began, it was getting quite cold especially at night. The temperature display on my laptop once hit 6 degree celsius at night, and I literally cuddled myself inside the quilt. You never know the feeling by simply staying in air-conditioned room, it's a different feeling altogether. (Eric and Ren Jie, I know you two would scorn at me, but it's really cold for me. :-D) While my body muscles struggled to produce more heat, I couldn't help but to hope that the weather cast some mercy on me.
Right now it's different again. For the past few days, it has been relatively warm with the temperature hovering between 15 and 25 degree celsius during daytime. I actually walked without my windbreaker most of the time in the trip to Great Ocean Road and Philip Island. I like the weather, especially the feeling of wind caressing my face and my whole body at the seaside. It's simply lovely, voiding me of all the worries that await me. I didn't care about the exam on Monday at all. Seriously. I forgot about it entirely.
At the time of writing, the wind is blowing at 58 kilometres per hour, and I can hear the howling of the wind outside. But the temperature is standing still at 25 degree. So I am going to have a good sleep tonight, getting ready for the next 8 weeks of gruelling lectures, practicals and exams. Good luck.
A guy who hails from Alor Star, Malaysia, Chang Yang has been living in Australia since 2005. He is a nerd who likes Maths and Physics, and has a lifelong addiction to the pursuit of knowledge. Everything cool or funny he says here is his futile attempt to gloss over his real-life role of a medical doctor. He is an anaesthetist in Perth.
It's a windy day. As I braved through the wind, I could see some fallen tree branches on the ground all over the university campus. Those are HUGE branches, there was even one tree that was completely uprooted.
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