19. Birthday Free Food Haul (Elisa's Guide to Free Birthday Food)

19. i can't believe it's been a year already! today's date somewhat has a pattern (: i don't like the number 19. it's prime and ugly, 17 sounds and looks better, but 19 is =/ doesn't feel like it's my birthday. from primary to high school, i used to be like, guess what!? it's my birthday in two weeks! and then remind people. now i think i'm at the stage where i'm like meh, not as excited as i used to be/don't want people to know how old i am. i bet my face can still pass as a 14yo.

it's mostly because i didn't have a party that it felt like it was my birthday. it kind of feels good not organising any parties, although i would love one, i don't have the moneys. i have to pay for some of my 21st if i have one. then again, i would rather not have any parties and save it all for my wedding. yes, i'd rather go all out on my wedding than have a few parties here and there.

before uni, there wasn't a lot of chances to go to the city, but since uni started, i go city everyday. i figured this year is the year to go after free food, since next year uni will be super busy (more on this later). such nice sunny weather today (: i've always loved august (totes no bias here lol) since it starts to get warm, not a lot of rain, and not too hot (:

Lowenbrau Keller

first time having a proper German meal. originally we were only going to share a free meal, but that seemed to cheap, so we got two plates. everyone ordered a massive pork knuckle (signature dish), but the crumbed skin of the pork knuckle would make my face even worse...lol.

this place is a must to go on your birthday! just make sure you book. the restaurant is massive inside. you can choose any single plate on the menu.

top: lunch special of haus-made sausage, mash potato, some special onion with some sauce-$14.50. bottom: Original Zwiebelrostbraten, Char-Grilled 300g Sirloin Steak with Cheese Spätzle, Apple Onion Confit & Red Wine Glaze

being asian, i tried to maximise my free meal, so i got the steak. it's $35 (on the website it says $38). i asked for medium, but the sides were a bit chewy. the apple things on top was quite interesting, so was the floury things. it reminded me of gnocchi, but more flavourless, so you needed to have some sauce with it. this flour was a bit dense-ish, but it was nice in its own way. i didn't actually hear the proper name for the lunch special, but for 14.50, that wasn't too bad. the sausage was sooo good! meaty, not overly flavoured, didn't feel like there was a skin on it, big, no fattening/oily feeling. no wonder why during aroma festival, hordes of people lined up to get a super duper long hot dog for $10. the mash here was pretty nice, onions had this sourness to it, and the sauce was good. i've had a lot of sausages from various butchers before (still have yet to go snag and stand), but this one is one of the best!

coffee was 3.50 and was decent (i had a chai for 3.50 at uni earlier, and it hardly had any spices and the cinnamon was just spooned on top of the milk-disappointed). btw, hot water here cost $1.50 (also at uni in that cafe i went to, hot water was 1.00. ridiculous).

walked past the Masterchef pop-up restaurant. literally pop up as it was a tent/marquee. probs heaps fancy inside. kinda like our exam centres, where it's actually nice inside. the place around the site smelt of fertiliser/sewage, i walked past at around 4-ish, and today is the opening night, so no idea how they would get rid of the smell on time. their bar wasn't opened yet, so couldn't see what the bar menu was ): no time to trek to the rocks again.

walked to darling harbour since free shuttle bus ended at 3.30. i guess that makes sense since if i was a paying customer, i would be so angry at those free shuttle buses causing even more congestion during school zone/peak hour. anyways, we were super full, so a good half hour walk was pretty good.

San Churros

person was nice and said she didn't have to check ID. she didn't even look at my voucher properly. i made two emails, so got two vouchers, so i could have gone the day before/after my bday.

churros for two: 6 churros w/ dark and milk chocolate dipping sauce-$15

dark was soo much better than milk. looking at other tables, most people finished more of their dark than milk. the dark choc had a more intense/not as sweet flavour, and a richer smell.

was looking forward to this since i've never had them before. tbh, they weren't that great. the centre of the churro was still a bit doughy, yet at the same time, the whole churro itself didn't have enough dough and was skinny. it didn't have the lightness of what a churro should be. maybe it's because it was free so they didn't cook it properly...MOVIE WORLD CHURROS ARE THE BEST! no jokes.

Baskin Robbins

 now this was a "waste of stomach space". you see. by now i'm quite full and full of sugar, but i signed up to the club. i've never seen a non-asian run baskin robbins before (if you do, please tell me). that asian lady didn't even care about customers. what if we were paying customers? would you still continue to look at your phone and ignore people who want to be served? sooooo stingy these people, even more than towers. when i tried the red velvet, the man only gave me a tiny bit ie a speck of rice. how do i frikken taste it? all i tasted was plastic. then i showed my voucher and id to the woman. she fully stared at the voucher and my licence, sructinising every single detail up close. literally. she put the paper close to her eyes, then scratched her head (which is super unhygenic, esp when you're serving food WITHOUT gloves). i felt like she memorised everything on my licence. after about a full 5min, she says "you can only choose the flavours was the spoon" ie the crap flavours. i didn't want anything chocolate/caramel after the churros. 

Candy Stripes.

i got candy stripes which was orange and white choc mousse. sooo flavourless. it was served in the smallest, cheapest soft serve cone, even maccas cones are better. the scoop of ice cream was the smallest scoop of ice cream ever! seriously, not worth your time going to the Harbourside one. such stingy people. and they were the only people who didn't say "Happy birthday". every other place said it at least once. their attitude is horrible. never ever going to this one again. no idea what this is worth, i think it's worthless because even for kids cones, they don't serve ice cream in it, only soft serve ice cream. i didn't bother to argue with them to get a waffle cone, after the first contact i made with them for the tasting, i just wanted to leave baskin robbins.

Boost

my all time favourite place to go! i love boost. just join their vibe club. boost has really good members discounts time to time, and you really do feel good after drinking it!

Skinny Dip-$6.40 (or 6.90, there was only a sign of this flavour, but no actual price). it had apple juice, strawberry sorbet, yogurt, raspberry, banana, and probably heaps of other stuff.

the guy was so nice, he's like "don't worry, you'll definitely get an original". the one in harbourside opened recently, and so far, they're the only store to still other 3 sizes, other places only have medium and original. he was also very generous with the sorbet, i counted 4 scoops. normally i think it's 2/3. so refreshing and a ncie way to finish all that food. (i actually didn't finish the boost, splitted it with my mum). not enough time to see if i could get a free boost at other stores, but i don't think i can since their card is electronic.

Nando's

never have a bought Nando's full price. what's good about this is that you can get a member club without purchasing anything (unlike sumo salad). got takeaway since it was getting late/i needed to go dance. they let you have a "birthday meal"-how generous of them! you can choose any regular item, any side and and drink. too much choice!

lemon and herb half chicken, peri peri chips and tropical juice-$17.45

i think this chicken wasn't as freshly grilled compared to my last experience. they probably half cooked it, then grilled it more to make it warm when someone ordered it, since we only waited 5min, and last time at towers it was a 10-15min wait (according to my mum). i guess it makes sense since you need to serve heaps of people quickly in the city. chicken was quite burnt on the other side. the peri peri chips actually weren't spicy (maybe they didn't put enough spice in it).

Subway

got this the day before since i knew i would be too full today.

6-inch steak and cheese sub ($7.20) and coke (no idea how much bottled coke costs these days).

the unsw doens't participate in these deals/offers, so i had to walk outside. this wasn't toasted/warm enough and i think this 6-inch was more like 5 inch. oh wells, free lunch, can't complain. also, my bro came home with a $5 meatball subway w/ drink. it was supposed to be 6-inches, but the guy misheard, and gave him a footlong but he let my bro still pay $5.

birthday cake from zest patisserie-tiramisu.

this was a mousse and sponge cake, with super cute chocolate coffee mousse cups on top. it's not made on site, it's made in the other franchise in rozelle, but they deliver cakes to cherrybrook at around 6am in the morning. i've had over 10 cakes from here, so i've basically tried everything i've wanted. this tiramisu cake was good, except it wasn't as nice as the other cake there. i think the sponge may have been soaked in too much liquer, and i don't think our fridge is cold enough since the mousse isn't firm enough. this was a medium sized cake (didn't need a big one unlike pervious years), and i couldn't fit all 19 candles without all the candle conjoining together, BUT I LOVE MY CANDLES, so we lit 13, then blew them, then lit 6, then blew them. #firstworldproblems.

all in all, over $80 worth of free food. probably will do some place again next year, but other places are a no-go. i had at least 2 other places to go to, but not enough time.

my present of food has been satisfied. didn't have a proper birthday dinner since i was sooo full. what i really want for my birthday is one of those "money can't buy" things. ...

thank you Dandelion for the cake. it was good, and it survived in one piece after i walked around for the whole day!  as always, it's the thought that counts (:

Laduree Macarons

thank you so much my fellow optom friend Shirley! what a lovely surprise!

i know getting food for your birthday is only temporary, but i love my food (: i've walked by countless times, looking at their products/people buying/eating it, because i couldn't bring myself up to buying something so expensive. now i have finally had these most famous in France/branded $3.30+ macarons! these survived after taking them around uni and around the city! so happy not one of them broke when i was holding them for over 5 hours (:

box of 6. from what i tasted i received: raspberry, pistachio, salted caramel, praline, chocolate, coconut

praline: quite a nuttiful flavour. i think i tasted peanut butter flavour in it as well. 

coconut: strong coconut flavour, but not like artificial coconut in confectionary.

salted caramel: wasn't salted enough (compared to zumbo's salted caramel packet mix). it was quite sweet since the caramel was strong, more salt would have been a better balance.

raspberry: i think this flavour came out the clearest. it had a jelly like centre and raspberry seeds.

chocolate: the ganache wasn't your traditional butter/creamish ganache. it felt more like a truffle texture and a nice chocolate hit, but not overly sweet at the same time.

pistachio: i think this was one of the sweetest. the pistachio flavour was a bit subtle, but the green colour on the inside was so pretty!

in terms of texture, i have to say it was better than zumbo's. i was surprised since they have been imported and flown from Switzerland, but they still maintained their crisp of the macaron shell, and slightly chewy inside (i ate one3 days later and it was still perfect). that initial crunch was good (: even in their display, not all of the macarons are perfect. some of mine in the box varied in diameter, and some didn't have a perfect feet, but i guess the texture made up for it. 

i guess i like zumbo's better since they're fatter and have more exotic flavours. i think zumbo is more suited for "young" people, whilst ladueree is for more "posh" people who like their traditional flavours. although i would like to try their purple flavoured marshmallow one...

i love to collect things, and this bag and box is a defs must keep. ahhh, those colours are sooooo pretty and complement each other. both colours have a nice light shade and they're so elegant! love purple <3

if i ever go to france, i do plan on going to all the most famous places (and it's cheaper there as well).

my mum actually wanted to do city2surf this year, but i told her, do you really want to pay $80 to walk 14km? but now i kind of want to do it next year (well walk about 90% of it. hehe, this reminds me of x country). i think it's one of those items on a bucket lists, like duke of ed. i've never walked more than 5km at one time. i guess doing it during uni will be better than trying it out after uni where you'll start to work and be even more unifit. i guess our stairs help to keep people somewhat fit if you don't do any other sports.

looool, if you didn't know, today a part of the roof on our library fell off, so they suspended classes near the library. i snuck into the earlier tute today and was all yolo if they marked the roll. they ended up passing the role around, and since i'm in the later group, my name was at the back, i still signed it, but if the tutors checked the role immediately after, then my name is the only name signed on that page and it would look dodgy. boringest tute ever! learning about ethics in research, blurgh. if i didn't sneak in, then i would've had a 4 hour break, and i'd rather skip a tute than wait four hours.

my bible study group this sem is half filled with 2nd year optoms. i always end up with 2/3 other optoms in my study. i have a leader who has almost the same name as me. there's more people in this group. oh, there's this girl in my bible study who'd already engaged! studying, but engaged. only 3rd or fourth year. so young and quick...my last sem bible study was all first years, this time i'm the only first year.

bro had his trial today. he does accelerated geo, and after his exam, his went with his friends to go have a "cry" ie eat food. he says hardly anyone gets band 6, but that contradicts the whole purpose of an accelerated class! you're supposed to do well, and personally i don't think geo scales well, so i don't understand how most of those guys don't get band 6.

hillsbuses have  real time now!!! and they updated the timetables by minimising the m2 traffic it used to face, so most bus rides which used to take 60min during peak hour take less than 50min (: sah good. i don't think real time is that necessary for the buses i catch to the city. they're always on time/have heaps during peak hour so it's not necessary to look at tripview. anyway,s half the time, state transit buses real time isn't very accurate.

my multi ticket acting up. when you dip it into state transit buses it's supposed to print the date, but the one i have today, it didn't print anything onto the card =/

free orange juice from maccas today (: it costs over $3.

i guess it's not a big surprise that MC is going to dubai this week, since qantas recently partnered with emirates, so i guess they have more sponsorship things when they go dubai. when you say tourist place, i think of dubai, with all their man made islands and tallest buildings and super unique hotels. since i don't have time to watch the whole ep online after dance, i just skipped to the end, and hey, the judges aren't sharing a plate this time when they taste! yum...top quality restaurant foooood....

nooooooo, they related all the foods on the MC Dine and Bar menu back to the dishes shown before...now i really want some. they changed the names of the menu and it sounds so much more appealing than before (even though there's still choc w/ vegemite to finish...)

had the worse dance day, if that's possible.

woke up at about 11 (which is four more hours than normal. i need to stop sleeping in on weekends during uni, wasting so much study time), felt like i forgotten something, but did the normal saturday wash up after breakfast when everyone has left, eat some brunch, tidy parts of the house up.

then about an hour later, i turned on my phone, and bam, my dance teacher said other people said i didn't turn up today for a lesson with the new choreographer. we only have 4 lessons with her and have to finish the dance by then for upcoming eistedfods. damnnnnnn, i can't believe i forgot i had a lesson on. you see, i normally have dance on mon and tues. tues is the important class since it's for competitions and you have to be dedicated which is why i've never missed a tuesday lesson, even during exams (and obs can't miss this tues if i already missed today's extra lesson). i guess i'll just sit out for that part she taught, you can teach so much in 2 hours. all i remembered for today was that i had an eistedfod.

so i left later than i intended and drove for about 2mins, then waited at a traffic light. i was thinking if i forgot anything, and bam, i realised i forgotten my jazz shoes! forgetting jazz shoes is the equivalent of forgetting to bring your swimmers to swimming. did a, well it's not illegal, but weird left turn. you know those t-junctions which has a designated "turn left with care", well i turned left using the lanes which were supposed to be turning right. if i didn't, then there wouldn't be an opportunity to u-turn until i get to dural. i hate driving to dural. always so much traffic since there's only one main way in and out.  so i drove madly home to get my shoes.

got third place for the other dance we have which hasn't placed yet. so far we have two dances, you either like one or the other. the alice in wonderland themed dance got 1st again. there was a section with muscial theatre, and wow, those kids were like 7 and so mature. a whole bunch of guys in those old english style clothes dancing/acting/being drama queens, and more 6/7yr old girls dancing with umbrellas for "singing in the rain". they were actually quite good. i can't imagine how much their parents invest into their dancing. you can tell their costumes cost at least $100, and they also had a costume change in the middle of their dance, well i guess that's just musical theatre.

ahhh, what is happening to me? sososo forgetful. even forgetting to set reminders on my phone.

so i got nothing done today. not goooood.

for one of my vision courses, we're starting anatomy of the eye. apparently they changed it this year so it's not as detailed as last year, probably because around 10 people failed the subject last year, which is a lot, esp in first year. the lecturer kept stressing about supplementary exams, and the procedures for it. you can get an overall of 65% for the subject, yet still fail since you didn't pass the final exam. but this subject has a dissection-can't wait (:

Black Star Pastry

i heard of this place well before i started uni. all my church friends who go usyd main campus said that if you go usyd, this place in newtown is worth visiting. from my house, i just catch a bus to the city, get off at a stop near wynyard, then conveniently, the newtown buses go to that stop, so it was literally hop on, hop off to get there. also caught the 370 back to unsw, it was a nice scenic ride, like i've seen green square station underground, but not on top.

i went at 10ish since i didn't want to be late to my lab. wow, so many people, i thought i avoided the whole coffee rush/peak hour, but nope, my coffee took a while to come. it's best to go by yourself, or with one other person only. personally, max no. of people is 3, since they don't have tables, only little stools to put your food on. max number of seating is about 10. so if you go in a group of 3+, it's best to get takeaway and find somewhere to eat. heaps of other people there were also eating/drinking by themselves. everyone who had the watermelon cake used their point and shoot cameras instead of phone cameras. i think i saw a tourist by herself having the cake, since she had a map of sydney or something.

brunch! quite a weird combo, but hey, there's always a first for everything (: also an "early" birthday present for myself. things i want are too expensive/not fully practical at this stage of uni life, so i am content with good food (:

famous lamb shank and red wine pie-$7.80, small cappuccino-$3.50

generous filling (:

if you didn't know, this pie won the best pie award this year. it's good. they used puff pastry (reminds me of the team challenge on MC last week, where Christina refused to make shortbread pastry for the pie, instead made the effort to make puff). this pie was completely different to other pies i've had before. i have had pies which had a piff top, but not the whole base/sides etc. this pastry was good since it had the lightness of puff pastry, but you didn't just taste butter. it also wasn't too oily on your fingers, unlike other pastries. to make puff pastry, you need heapssss of butter, so i was glad it didn't feel like i was eating butter. as expected, the red wine was subtle. it was pretty much packed with real meat. also, it wasn't overly salted/seasoned! perfect balance! whenever you eat a normal pie, you always get a massive sodium hit. this one isn't heavy on the salt flavour (: the sauce was free, otherwise i wouldn't have got it. in primary, i think those packets cost 20c, i bet now they cost 50c. didn't use a lot since the sauce was too overpowering combined with the flavours of the pie.

i was walking around today, the average pie is $5, and most of the time it's minced beef meat/small bits of meat. i haven't had pie face before and i don't really see the appeal, since you can draw a face on your pie with sauce (my bro used to always do that). even frozen supermarket pies cost about $1.50-$2 each, and the pastry is just some plain, floury thing with so much sauce and possible a lot of fake meat. i've had "gourmet" frozen pies before, the meat is in chunks, but there are not many chunks in the pie. the only thing i was disappointed in was that some of the edge was burnt. i saw one of the chefs take a whole tray out, and they were all pretty much the same dark brown...if you haven't been yet, i suggest you go before they hike up prices again. reading some reviews, last years prices was less then $7.50, i'm pretty sure they increased prices because they won an extra award.

the coffee was quite small for a small size. it was also a bit on the watery side and not hot enough. the flavour of the coffee was good. i still don't really know how to distinguish between brands of coffee beans. you can tell if the milk is frothed nicely, the texture, temp, smell, bitterness, but it's hard to tell which brand is what. i know lavazza is weaker than others, and i think single origin is blacker than others-it's still really hard to tell the diff in brands.

they didn't make any blueberry/lavender tarts today ): will go again when i have time...i heard that yesterday they sold out of watermelon cakes at 1.30. so glad i went early-ish to avoid double disappointment.

wow, the 133 chem lab room is sooo big. we 77 people (can fit even more), but later when we do babs, they can only fit 70, so they want 7 people to move into the 9am slot. no frikken way. i've only been on time to one 9am thing this sem. phys allows 20mins lateness, but for chem...gg. i hate my demonstrator, she has this super heavy accent and i don't understand her, and she is so slow! she only ticked off my equipment checklist, not sign it, hopefully they won't bust me. seriously, i always end up with the slowest demonstrators-waste of time! skipped my first phys "other" lecture today. i haven't done any phys tute questions, i have a feel i am not going to be able to do them without looking at answers first, just like visn =/ i can say i like fridays now, so good not having a 9-6pm on the last day of the week (:

i cannot stress how much i love fast bus drivers. it's the difference between a good day and a bad day for me. like coming back home today, the bus i caught left 20mins after the one before it, but it caught up with it. that being said, almost everyday since the m2 upgrade finished last week, i've seen heaps of police cars/motorcycles fining people.

bro has trials (well technically trial) next week. so this week he started to go study in the library (crazy, only started studying hard the week before). he's the complete opposite to me. i hate studying at libraries/any place other than home. i hate noise while studying-complete silence is the best, he loves his music. he has so much "down/relax time", i think relax time by youtubing/gaming is a waste of time during exams. how do i relax? watch tv while eating dinner (:

ahh heston. one day i will have your famous bacon and eggs (hopefully by then, your restaurant will still have it). those random sensory stuff he did on MC class, i will try them when i have those stuff....did you guys see how nice their vanilla pods are!? in the shops you get crap quality, thin, not fresh, curled, hard, not as aromatic vanilla beans for $2.50 each. they have fat, long, STRAIGHT, fresher, good quality beans that they can casually chew on to try out their taste/smells for fun. even though MC gets their beans from Spice and Co, i bet they save their nice ones for them since you can't buy perfectly long, straight beans from Spice and Co packets at the shops.

cousin is in NY for work, and then spending time there to play. i've always wanted a career with travel...the only travelling i can think of for my course if teaching/researching/coming up with a brilliant optom related thing.

seems like i'm not the only one who's lost. found the fb chem page for this sem, and aww yeah, the first two weeks, so far, have the same content as our optom chem. was late to my 9am chem tute today ): i think the only diff between normal chem and optom chem is that we only do chem for 8 weeks, then 5 weeks of babs, but the whole subject is still under babs. 9-6 today wasn't too bad, better than last sem's 9-6 (:

foundation day today/64th birthday for unsw. they had some free stuff like free moochi, but i'm not going to spend 15mins walking to the other side then another 10mins to go to another part of campus. they had free moochi at ryde last sat, but as i've said before, i'm over froyo (except yogurt world and yogurtland).

perfect timetable...

dayum. just found out today that there's a chem tute at 12. i swear when i saw the enrolment times, there was only 9am, 3 and 4. so i chose the 9am since the other ones i would get home later. i'm pretty sure they opened that class since heaps of people had stuff clashing. too late to change/it's over enrolled ): just realised,

 the perfect timetable for my subjects would have 3 hours of break the whole week! tues/wed/fri being "block" days, ie no breaks. then i have bible study and the talks at lunch, so if i had the perfect timetable, i would only have 1 hour of break a week! only two 9am starts. two 3pm finish, two 2pm finish, one 11-6pm day. i wonder if anyone was lucky enough to have that perfect timetable. i know of a few people who have close to perfect, managed to get all the early times for almost everything. next time, next time it shall be my turn...

they actually give out set timetables for everyone from 2nd year, so everyone has a "fairer" timetable, same thing just different groups.

i have 2 block days, but then two days with three hours of breaks, so they cancel each other out.

wow, i was late to my 10am lec today. luckily it started late. i guess having a 9am tute tmr morning helps me to try to keep a healthier sleeping time. (lol jks, i survive on less than 7 hours of sleep now). ending at 2 is so awkward. there's a bus at 2.10, so i obvs miss that, the next one is at 3.10, then the express buses start at 3.25, but by the time it gets to my place, the express bus which left later overtakes the earlier, slower bus. 

if i catch train back to penno, and if i get picked up, it's school zone time, so for my mum to come pick me up, it's kinda annoying. i catch a bus from home to city, so i avoid trains. catching bus from station to close to home, then getting picked up, that's annoying as well. other option is m2 bus, so i guess i get picked up from there. if i catch the bus to towers, then i have to catch m60 back then picked up again (m60 doesn't stop outside my house...). dear hillsbus, can you please add another bus service at 2.30pm? basically i have to get picked up somewhere if i end early to not waste heaps of time. this probably makes no sense to you guys. i just need a bus back home at 2.30.