Last night was WA's annual Pride Parade. Not a whole lot of things, or people, to see but interesting, nonetheless. You have Parents & Friends of Lesbian & Gays, Teachers for Pride, Christians with Pride, and parade marchers from the old to the barely walking. This is what diversity is eh.

Whole stretches of roads at Perth's arty area, sorta like Bugis, were closed. A first, where we could walk on the streets as if we owned them and take pictures with transvestites and other flamboyant characters. When I grow up, I wanna dress like a man who dresses like a woman. I think they have all the fun!

Bec has been talking more lately. God knows why. The rest of the house, save for three girls, hardly ever communicate with me. Oh wait. If there are six of us, bec plus three equals... one housemate left. So it's just one of them I hardly talk to. And that's the german. But she's awfully smiley though, shrugs.

Anyhow, Bec sprained her ankle today, during her exam. Sucks, doesn't it. She's got another exam for ballet on friday and God knows how she's going to get through that.

But you know what's funny? When I got home today, she was sitting at the dining table talking to her friend who, I suppose, helped her home. Her feet was propped up on the table, with her ankle resting on her frozen bag of peas. That's right. Peas. To a person who didn't know what was going on, it just seemed... weird. Like, why is she treating her vegetables this way? And why doesn't her friend say anything?

It wasn't until her friend left and she stood up to cook dinner that I saw her limping. So the whole story came out, which led to:

"Do you need ice? Cos you can take mine if you want, instead of using peas, you know."
"Cos the bag of peas is soft. It moulds to your ankle."
"But it's food, are you gonna eat your peas afterward?"
"Yeah. It's not like I took it out of its packet."
"True. But-"
"Well I'm eating it."

So that shut me up. As long as she's not feeding me those peas, I'm fine, anything goes. :)

After dinner she came out - apparently didn't believe in keeping one's weight off a sprained ankle - and hauled her whole carton of pepsi into her room. That's about 30 cans, give or take. I nearly nearly nearly said "Bec, surely you can live without pepsi for one night?!" But then I thought, the girl's in pain right now, give her a break, so I offered help instead. See, I'm human, in a way.

Let's start a new god-know-how-many-parts-there-will-be series shall we? much like the killer glares and paiseh moments.

This is the serious side of this author coming out, for real. Today I had to sit through seven (seven!!!) horrible student presenters during Media & Nation lecture.

"Media & Nation? Whose nation?"
"Australia lah. It's a crap module, I know."

Anyways, I had my own presentation two week ago and although it was nothing fantastic, nothing that would earn any of that Best Individual Presenter shite, but still a-ok, y'know? So there were these students who just stood there in front of the entire lecture group and read off their papers, not once did their take their eyes off those damn papers and sweep a glance at the naked audience. Sheesh!

If that wasn't bad enough, you have these students (I hope) who look like those lager-guzzling g'day-mate types, those who look like they're pregnant, males too, with their beer bellies, those whose Aussie accents are soooooo bloody thick, I feel like they're teaching me how to milk cows instead. Sheesh!

Then there's those people? You know? They sound like they're asking questions? Instead of speaking in proper sentences? You know? They end their sentences with an upper tone? Instead of going down? Which is what people usually do when they reach a full-stop? Savvy? Sheesh?

The houseflies are becoming a problem. A huge problem. I've never seen such persistance. I can walk the length of ten football fields, swiping at them every ten steps, but they still stick to you. And they love kissing you on the lips, your hair, your eyes, your cheeks, face area, generally. The particular area you particularly do not want them. It drives me crazy.

Here's something for the curious, a look at my study desk in ECU:



Well if you notice things that don't really go along with studying, let me know. You really deserve a pat on your back for your sharp eyes!

And oh, look at what boss sent me. Sweet, isn't it? :)



Ignore that newS wallpaper on her pc, though. keke.

It's my 20th today.

I just had a celebration of brownies, cheese and biscuits, beer, wine, and salami.

I am drunk. My head is spinning, I just threw up in a friend's apartment. My head is still spinning. But it's my 20th today. So that means I'm excused. :)

Happy 20th Birthday, peiwen.

This year's Spring has been playing with us. One day she visits and the next day she relinquishes her place to Winter.

I'm pretty much done with Winter now! I want Spring! Winter sucks when I want to take showers at 2am, pre-dinner strolls, long chats in the lounge with my door opened, eat ice cream.........

Well of course, I could have an earlier shower, stroll inside my house, not open my doors or eat ice cream but one has to enjoy life right? ;) According to cellmate, life is short. If I'm going to die of cancer, I might as well do things I enjoy (like skydiving at 14,000 feet)!

My first semester's coming to an end faster than I would have liked. People (German and Australian) are moving out, people (Malaysian, Kenyan and Hong Kong-er) are going home for the summer. Only people like me stay alone in a foreign country, spending Christmas and the New Year - seasons of family and love - away from family.

We're looking for a farm job. Some apple-picking, or vine trimming, perhaps a little country pub. I hear they pay you tons. Reckon it would be quite the experience to share over Chinese New Year in my renewed cantonese with relatives who will pay attention.

The cooking skills have improved. Fried potatoes, udon, spaghetti, soups, and recently, jelly and pancakes. Next stop: cheesecake. The ones from those ready-made packets of course, in time for my upcoming 20th, because mum said so.

"Your birthday coming you know?"
"Of course I know!"
"Are you going to celebrate it? Did you tell your friends about it?"
"I don't know... Do you expect me to announce it or something?"
"Buy a cake and share lah."
"Maybe I'll bake one. Cheesecake sounds good."

I can't believe I'm only 20. I feel like 25. The 19-year-old neighbour in the village feels like a sweet 16 to me even though she should feel more like a contemporary. Tsk. I should start acting my age. :S

We went to a cafe tonight for reasons I don't have to disclose. :)

Surprisingly, Oriel turned out to be this very pleasant cafe in Subiaco (a suburb in Perth) and guess what? It's open TWENTY FOUR HOURS, THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE DAYS A YEAR. Is that jaw-dropping or what? Considering how lazy the average Australian is.

Anyhow, it certainly is the stuff hollywood movies are made of. You get in, wait for the maitre'd (dunno if that's spelt correct), sit at your table, y'know, the works. Some couples come here for dates, too. I feel like I might just see a tinseltown crew filming the next romantic comedy with Diane Lane and Richard Gere.

I don't know if it's just me, but I much prefer seeing couples here than back home. You stare at them for a bit, not too long because it gets rude, they catch your eye and offer a hint of a smile, as if saying "Yeah I'm having a good day too." If I did that at a cafe along Boat Quay, I'd probably get a glare that's like "Stare what stare?"

Well, check out this drink, by the way. Nudie gives you a day's (pricey) serving of fruits in a bottle, how convenient eh. The best thing? I get more fruits than what the market offers. I mean, I've never seen cranberries at the markets. It's available in Singapore too.

Do you know that Aussie fries taste much better than the ones back home? If I could tapow for you guys I would! I'm not kidding, the first time we went to Hungry Jacks, Perth's equivalent of Burger King, we took one bite of our fries and went,

"Eh? Different ah?"
"Yah yah! It's a different kinda of salty!"
"Why ah?"
"Is it their potatoes?"
"Aussie-grown potatoes so different meh?"

And the mystery wore on, for about two weeks. Then the answer came to light.

Chicken salt.

I shit you not, it's as simple as that. Chicken salt.

My friend was so determined chicken salt was the solution she bought one from Coles and viola! We have tasty fries! Mm-mmmmm, life's good. :)

UPDATE:

Anyhow, pk's comments kinda spawned a google and guess what? Apparently chicken salt is as Australian as Bec's vegemite and strangely enough, does not contain any inch of chicken flavouring or seasoning. See wiki's entry for (a little bit) more information.

At the train station where you alight if you want to go to Ikea, I spotted this pair of legs out of nowhere.



Cool huh. Supposed to fit one's arse on it, though I didn't dare try. They were just sitting there in the middle of the platform, with no accompanying plague or perhaps another pair of female legs. Very very interesting.

Over the weekend I was slogging away in the computer labs when I looked up from the iMac's screen to notice the oddly familiar colour at the back of the classroom.



Yeah, it looks familiar, just needs an iPodified figure to go along with it.

Not that I'm trying to nitpick or anything, but how is it that people who look like they possess the normal amount of commonsense will post a message on yahoo! group that goes:

Subject: Hi,
Message: hi!!! for u guys that moeslem. i just need to know when the fasting
month start? does anyone know where i can get the schedule? thanks!!

Well that was a very nice message with such an appropriate subject isn't it. And someone with an equal amount of commonsense (I suppose) can reply with something like this:

Dear To Whom It May Concern,

I'm also a moslem the fasting month will start this coming wednesday.

Your Sincerely,
Diyana Amir.

Oh I really don't want to be anal but surely you can see the name or nickname of whoever wrote that post and is there a need to be so formal, my sincere Diyana? Since we're still on this topic, I wish you'd learn some punctuation.

Is it so difficult to write a proper message? I HATE receiving email with unrelated or empty subject titles, maybe I should do it to you guys so you know what I'm talking about.

You think just because you hardly talk to your housemates, they don't know what kinda person you're like?

That was what I thought at first.

Last week our Resident Advisor (RA) visited us for her weekly round of checking, just to make sure all of us did our cleaning duties and keep our unit livable. So she left a message on our whiteboard, "Unit's looking clean guys, I'll call on wed night to schedule another visit."

So being utterly me, I wrote a little reply under her message, "of course our unit's clean!" But I left it at that, anonymous.

A couple of days later my housemate was rubbing off the RA's message when she asked me,

"Were you the one who wrote that message?"
"The one about our unit?"
"Yeah"
"Ohhhh, maybe?"
"Of course it's you."
"What makes you think that?"
"It just sounds like you... 'of course our unit's clean'"
"But it could have been anybody!"
"It's you, ok, I know it."

Imagine that! This coming from someone I hardly talk to except for "hi", "see ya", and "what're you cooking?"