Madang Take 2, Devon Take 2, Pressed Juices

dinner from friday night. korean bbq at madang. second time i've been there. i think service is better at night. love how there is more variety here. food delicious as usual.

$109 worth of food (with drinks). having beer with kbbq really helps to refreshen your meal

dinner at home on saturday night-10 dishes in total. and then mum trying to plate up fruit-not too bad i guess since we never think about presentation at home.

my uncle got those chocolates from a first class lounge at the airport. the chocolates are from the Peninsula hotel, which are $30hkd each, or over $5AU since the aussie dollar haas dropped even more ): but the pinkish ones were the best, nice strawberry flavour

i've been meaning to go devon again since i got free coffee vouchers when they came to our uni middle of last year. finally had time to go today!

chai and large cap-$4 each

chai was really disappointing. only a very subtle after taste of spice, and too milky. the cap was quite nice, but both drinks were quite hot, hotter than your drinking temp coffee.

Naked Bruschetta: roasted pumpkin, pea & goat’s curd mousse, sage & konbu crunch, soybeans, pea tendrils, focaccia, 63C egg -$14.50

Little Lost Bread: brioche French toast, fresh and freeze dried strawberries, balsamic & strawberry gastrique, strawberry cheesecake ice cream, Arnott’s biscuit crumble-$16.50

hidden egg #eggporn

they were quite busy and it was a warm day, so by the time to toast came to us, the ice-cream was already melting ): prefer three williams french toast. there were more toppings here, but it wasn't crunchy enough. this one is more soft and got soggy faster. love the freeze dried raspberries, but would have preferred more flavour in the ice cream.

the naked bruschetta was definitely not your typical bruschetta but it was so delicious. the bread helped to mop up that egg yolk, and the japanese seasoning helped give flavour to the soybeans and pea tendrils. the green paste which we thought was originally avo was so yum. for people who don't like goat taste, this was combined nicely with the pea to give it a smooth texture, and was super subtle. i think we got lucky on this dish since there were stuff on it compared to people who ordered late than us...

i've missed Australian brunch! i'm actually quite out of it. did not realise until today devon opened up a new cafe, Devon on Danks

also got my watch adjusted which i complained about in a few posts back...the very first reason i didn't ask a girl to help me was in case they recognised i didn't get my watch from them at their sydney store. well luckily that guy wasn't there to break my watch but damn, i knew my suspicions were right. the girl there was like "we don't have this watch." even though they sell over 50 maybe 100 watches, girls tend to have an eye for detail, and she recognised that watch wasn't from sydney or that model sold in australia. damn, but she helped me anyway with no charge. but after a while, you do tend to recognise if you sell this model or not. like in my store which is relatively small, we still have over 600 frames and 300 sunnies, and you do know all the brands and recognise which model of particular brands we stock. plus, fake brands are very obvious and no brands/super cheap brands from other stores can be detected since the quality is very poor. even with our cheap non branded frames, they have a sturdiness/quality over cheap frames from other places. so i can tell if the frame people ask me to fix is from us or not most of the time without checking the computer. i guess only at time i would say this frame isn't from us unless it's super obvious to the customer, since we still want to provide good service, regardless of where they're from so hopefully they come to us next time...but anyways, even though the girl said that, she was still willing to adjust it so all good.

pressed juices-$9 each

walked around and then stumbled on this pressed juice shop in MLC. i've seen heaps of these on instagram, but since this company is based in melbourne, it's hard to get access to here. plus, their shops in std are all in the city or eastern suburbs. i wasn't planning to buy any, but my mum ended up trying about a quarter of the flavours there (they have so many), so we got some in the end. these aren'y actually too expensive, i bought a bottle or pressed juice in nyc at an organic supermarket and it was $12. these juices are all raw and you can definitely taste the individual ingredients. feel so healthy after, but it comes at a cost

at this rate, it'll take forever to post about america. so, so busy, not actually complaining, i really don't mind work (unless you get difficult customers with questions hard to answer)

Road Trip-Coffs Harbour

finally have time since last week to get this up and back at my desk. been working and going out at night since i got back.

last sunday was super stressful, finishing an assignment in between work and before i left on a road trip (which also meant missing out on the tennis)

managed to finish the assignment, but pretty sure i didn't do it right... ): goodbye much needed distinction. they also marked quite harshly for group presentations even though it's a gen ed. what was even worst was that i had to get up at 4.30am the next day to drive down to hurstville to lend my car to someone's mum so we could use their 7 seater (didn't even use my car in the end), so i couldn't stay up doing my assignment. also didn't want to bring my laptop with me, also didn't want to waste my mobile data doing the assignment. no wifi at a caravan park.

supposed to take 6 hours from where i live, but i had to leave the earliest to go south first. then over an hour picking up other people, then left around 8am, got there at around 6pm, so 10 hours, since we shopped and ate at newcastle and port maquarie as pit stops. newcastle was a waste of time since it's 1/2 drive detour away from the highway.

here are a few highlights from the week. most of the week was raining except for one sunny day.

pulled pork burger at newcastle. kind of dry but heaps of meat

microwaved then pan fried pizza from costco to give it crunch, pan fried garlic bread

to save money, people bought heaps of frozen stuff from costco. i had a car refrigerator and someone else also bought an esky to use to put some frozen stuff. arrived at the caravan park and turns out no oven. luckily they had a microwave oven, but still improvised with the pans. ended up not finishing a lot of food...well i did most of the washing, so have to commend the people thinking of how to cook oven food without an oven. mainly ate microwaved stuff for the week lol

i guess it's a different experience compared to renting a house. haven't been to a caravan park in a while since we haven't been camping for quite a few years now. the place was actually 1/2 hour drive from the main coffs harbour cbd, so it was quite peaceful there. 

wallabies everywhere

walking out to the beck from where we stayed

patterns (:

the beach outside our place was actually quite gross, as in the water wasn't clear

went trampolining and did some gymnastics there since they had some equipment. the place wasn't quite as big as penrith/baulko, but first time going to a trampoline place.

camel riding!

(don't judge if i look like i'm 10)

selfie with mario the youngest (10yrs) and tallest camel there

typical tourist shot

sapphire beach-the one sunny day

waves weren't that great so boogie boarding didn't really work. the locals there are really nice, letting us know there were rips and asked if we lost a phone. also went exploring at the rocks.

didn't take heaps of photos, just enjoyed the company and chilling or the week.

grilled barramundi and chips-$15

going back to port macquarie. i think this price is decent for a tourist destination.

i volunteered to drive the whole week. on the way there drove for 3 hours straight, same as on the way back. split the journey into 3 legs, and i did the most. i guess since i'm on my fulls it's faster to get to your destination faster. and the other car only had green p's but all of them didn't mind driving over 100 to keep pace with my car lol. if i didn't drive and since i'm short, i would be stuck in the back seat for the whole week-so driving is fantastic!

pho at cabra-$11

dinner after the trip since most people live near here but i haven't had pho at cabra before. too bad all the good places were close,d and this place didn't really have other viet food apart from noodles. will one day go back for a cabra food run in the daytime

thankful for a safe trip there and back and just spending time there with friends.

ahh summer school, this stress. crying again because i can't watch this epic semi finals 5th set decider and crying because i yet again do not have time to finish the assignment. doesn't help that i have to wake at 5am on monday, so i can't pull an all nighter. only option is to bring my work with me, but then there's no internet.

spent the whole day switching topics. argh, can i finish it in 7 hours? doesn't help that i have work on both days this weekend...

Hillside Hotel

met up with a friend whom i haven't seen in ages! we both go past this place often, but never actually went inside.

$10 steak w/ chips! mushroom sauce extra $3, but pretty big, enough to share

T bone steak, but it was alright for the price. ordered medium rare, and she got well done, so it shrunk a bit...

so good catching up on travels! talked for about 3 hours. so good to hear what other people saw and yay for photo sharing.

need to start on my assignment. don't no what to write about D= the thing i first thought of is too generic and would be hard to specify stuff, then this other topic is also generic.

went to the dentist today, and the bill was about one way to america! so expensive! had to get this coating thing, which i last got in 2002 apparently...so luckily it's not a yearly thing. wow, that money made in half an hour....but i could never be a dentist. so painful for the patient and quite gross for yourself, but obviously you would get used to it if you're a dentist...

have to go back again since i forgot to bring something ): that time wasted. but catching up today wasn't really a waste of time since i actually have no other times which we are both free

almost there

i can't believe i finished it! never ever thought i would.

writing a 4000+ word report in 3 days with work from until 4 or 5pm, then a family dinner on one night which i couldn't skip since they asked ask a few times to go over for dinner...i already had to skip meeting up with the group, and missed another family dinner, since i was that screwed. couldn't really start the assignment until saturday since we had to collect info for three days. the lecturer said if you spent 10 hours on it on sunday, then you could actually enjoy your monday public holiday. no way, all of us (well those in my group) fully kept going, where some people actually did all nighters...

if i didn't have work, it meant approx extra 8 hours each day, which is another day to spend the assignment, but i couldn't skip work...the assignment wasn't super hard, it was just very long and since the instructions were quite broad, you could focus on anything, and then keep talking about it. probably rambled on, but on the day/morning it was due, submitted it at 2am. first time staying up that late for an assignment. luckily i didn't have to pull my first all nighter, and survived on 5 hours of sleep on monday night.

then tuesday day/night was the first time i ever started another 30% assessment the day before it was due. it was group work where our tutor assigned another random into our group, but since he didn't reply to us, i emailed the lecturer and tutor and got permission to kick him out of the group. he didn't turn up to presentations today, so he lost 30%. then we are only allowed to skip 1 tute without any medical certificates, but he's already skipped two, so i'm pretty sure he failed the course. i mean, why would you even do a summer course? it's not cheap at over 1000 compared to our other subjects during semester. and he was an international student, so would have easily wasted 4k or something. don't even know why summer courses are so expensive for 7 days worth of learning.

presentations were ok i guess. people interacted, well kind of i guess...even brought my laptop to work since i was scared i wouldn't finish. but just the amount of stress chucking a random person into out group and not sure if he would even turn up... but i don't think it should be worth 30% since i only spent a few hours compared to the other assignment where i spend a few days with heaps of hours.

now another assessment due next week, another 30%. well actually, i only have 2 days to do it, since i'm working sat and sun, then next week i'm going on a road trip and as if i would bring my laptop with me. yes, busy busy. after i get back then there's 3 weeks which is mainly filled with work, then uni starts again. that's why i have no time in the holidays (again). no time to even bake when i have all the ingredients at home. and kind of have to book in advance to meet up with people since i', busy, but so is everyone else...

it's kind of weird, this last assessment you only write 1000 words, but you have a whole week (must finish in 2 days), while the other one is 4x the amount of words, and that's not even including the extra stuff we needed to record and calculate, and that needed to be done in 3 days, whilst todays presentations technically only had 1 day to do...i should actually do the CATEI for the course.

the good thing is that there are no finals, hence the lecturer is really friendly and the stuff we learn is quite general. but never been so stressed about assignments before, not even for optom. only super stressed about failing in optom...i guess what puts more pressure for this summer course is the aim for at least a d since i really need to pull up my wam before end of third year.

stress food. so stressed i didn't have time to eat it lol

went to green peppercorn as a reward. wasn't going to go and go home to start on the next assessment, but i figured i won't get anything done tonight since i am way too dead, running on 5/6 hours of sleep for over a week (and helped out with church the week before), so i haven't slept in for a while...and after talking about food and nutrition for over a week, i really needed some good food!

it's really lovely to have friend's friends who drive back from uni to city, especially with sydney's now bipolar weather. walking to the car it was sunny, some blue skies. 10mins later in the city, fully pouring, then sometime later fully sunny.

no idea how much each dish was, didn't even care what we ordered since i just needed down time. didn't stay out too late due to my hourly buses back home =/ some dishes:

the new fried apple pie dessert. so yum! apple pie filling and pastry deep fried with some cream on top and thinly sliced apple prices.

dessert! the best part

wasn't cheap, spent around $27, but we ordered heaps. on our side of the table were 5 people, and we ordered around 9 dishes between us. destressing.

nice to see other people alive as well with blogs popping up!

oh, did i mention the last assessment is a blog post? too bad i don't post good english here, can't practice proper blogging skills lol.

still crying because federer lost yesterday, and continual crying until tuesday since i can't possibly finish it in time. not having a completed assignment and group project with nothing prepared to say is going to be a first. not. enough. time. regret saying yes to work all three days. so stressed about not finishing. feels almost as stressful as an optom prac exam.

Aqua S

Congrats to Happy Apple and your sister! so, so happy for the both of you! prayers do get answered, just sometimes it might take time (years), or in ways unimagined, but God really has planned out everything :) really happy about that news today. i knew you could do it!

on the flip side, made groups for group work...made my group with people i know, was about to leave then next minute a guy turns up when the tute was almost finished. since we were the smallest group, the tutor made him join our group. we already had things planned, why couldn't you join the other group which also didn't leave yet? it's not that i'm unaccepting to new people, it's just that people who turn up for 1 minute of the tute are those who don't bother putting any effort sand really on the group mark. well 4/5 is individually marked, but still, we have to share ideas with him etc. moral of the story, whenever you make a group for group work, leave ASAP before the tutor alters anything.

so, so sad, so i decided to buy some relatively expensive but good looking ice cream.

lemon tea and sea salt soft serve with fairy floss on a chocolate waffle cone-$5.30

yumm

waiting for the bus anyway, so decided to get this. it's not the most expensive soft serve i've had (there was one in america which was more expensive...) but i was expecting to pay $6+ for this type of "concept store" stuff. i think this store only opened on monday, and has flooded up insta since, so i decided to needed to try it out myself, and to cheer me up from the group disappointment. store is run by asians in case you're wondering...

it's actually really, really good! the salt is prominent but not too overpowering that you feel you are eating salt-and it's blue! love eating weirdly coloured stuff. balanced nicely with the slight acidity and some sweetness from the lemon tea. got more lemon tea here i think, but i actually preferred it like that. wanted to get something refreshing, so i didn't choose the biscotti. the fairy floss was completely unnecessary for an extra $1.50, but it looked cool. you could also get caramel popcorn, grilled marshmallow and popping candy for toppings. for all toppings in a large cup, i think it was $8.

kilojoules count skyrocketed after this.