I hate dress up. I don't see the appeal of wearing something uncomfortable and awkward for the sake of entertainment. Beth had a flatwarming last Saturday with a theme of "pre-Internet" (it had taken them a month to get connected, I probably would have died by then) so it was pretty open. There were pirates and 1950s housewives and flappers and in my entire 5 seconds of considering what to wear, I donned a bedsheet on top of my clothes and called it a toga. Apparently this gives me "M4D PR0P5". Go look at the photos on Facebook.

Sunday was pretty busy too. After music in the morning, we had lunch at Great India and then went to Sunni's for some rounds of Carcassonne and Dominion. And that was great, it's been a while since I played either of them and I didn't do too badly. It took up most of the afternoon so I didn't get a chance to have my usual Sunday nap, so I was kinda tired when I went to Vaughan's for a delicious lamb roast.

I wasn't feeling too well on Monday so I took the day off, but I managed to achieve a lot of things (namely sleep). Psypoke is chugging along nicely, although it's a bit slow at times, and work is okay. Still waiting on news on my next exciting project...

Smudge's owner has finally taken to putting a collar on him, so it's kinda like we can't feed him anymore. He still visits us often (the collar has a bell on it, so while I'm at home and I hear a random jingle sound, I know there's a cat at the door) and he still loves being scratched and playing with my keys, but yeah, it's like the collar is a "hands off" signal so no more foods. Or maybe a little bit once in a while.

Yeah, life is alright at the moment. Really just waiting for that big news.

Not many exciting things happening at the moment, but I'll blog anyway for the sake of appearing up-to-date with everything.

Yesterday, at Charlotte's insistence, we went to Animates in Thorndon to admire the adorable animals there. It's weird when she does the baby talk thing to them. They had a few bunny rabbits there, and three kittens. So cute!

On Saturday, I met some workmates for yum char at Majestic Cuisine. I was so thrilled with the food (and uh, the wonderful social aspect, of course) that I forgot to take pictures. But oh well. Seems like everyone enjoyed it, so it might be grounds to organise another one in the future.

I won another Starcraft II game on Saturday night, but I was playing a noob so it wasn't really that satisfying. Playing online is so stressful, especially 1v1. I'm always freaking out over my build orders and what to do and micro-managing everything, I don't know why I keep subjecting myself to such torture everytime I play. Oh well.

Had another round of golf/driving range on Thursday, but I was rather off-form and didn't strike that many good hits this time round. Hopefully this will change for this week.

On the Psypoke front, I'm still trucking away at this damn damage calculator. What used to be three files doing the bulk of the calculation is now just over ten, all in neat classes and database-driven functions. The silhouettes for the three Generation V starters were released today, with the actual pictures suspected to be leaked sometime tomorrow. I'm kind of apathetic to it, but it would be nice to know, I guess.

I had a fantastic Labour Weekend. So good catching up with all my friends. As a result of the excessive fun, I have caught a cold and am suffering at work. Today was terrible, I couldn't concentrate and I kept sneezing and after drinking that disgusting Lemsip crap I felt like throwing up.

Anyway.

I finished up at work on Friday and met Laura and Raymond at Cha for dinner. It was still relatively early, so Raymond and I went back to his apartment and Laura went back to hers at around 7.40pm. Then Raymond wanted to have a shower and by the time he finished...it was 8.05pm.
Picked up Laura at 8.10pm
Got to the flat at 8.15pm
Picked up Jono at 8.25pm
Arrived at the airport at 8.30pm
Boarded the plane at 8.40pm
Took off for Auckland at 8.50pm

Yeah, rushed, much. In the chaos I left my keys at the flat, but that wasn't too big an issue. I got picked up by Casey at the other end and met Bob, Ted, Amber and Han at Momo's, where I proceeded to knock my glass over and cut my hand in the process. After bleeding profusely, they decided to give me a free drink (YAY).

I turned up at church on Saturday morning, much to the surprise of the music team (apparently Jin hadn't told them I was on). So yeah, I got to play piano, and that was great jamming with the boys again. So much fun, far more fun than at Central Baptist. Afterwards, we distributed some flyers for the Light Party before I headed over to St Heliers to meet the Grammar Gang for lunch at La Vista. Great food there, so good to catch up with everyone. I was free for the rest of the afternoon and it was still early, so we went down the road to play Mini Golf. There were so many fails there, it was awesome. Props to Amnon for beating Richard!

It was still early in the day so we went back to Mat's flat and just hung around for a while, watching Family Guy and playing some Smash Bros Brawl. I really can't stand the Wii control scheme (and that's not because I've been working with it for the past week). The Wiimote has so few controller buttons that they could not possibly encapsulate all the techniques into a user-friendly scheme. Once I started with the Gamecube controller, it felt so much better. MetaKnight and Dedede are awesome! :3

Left the flat and went to Cinta's place for dinner with her, Alice, Jo and Reuben. We had apricot chicken, some cheese and cauliflower, boiled vegetables and roast potato, and Oreo cheesecake for dessert. Awesome stuff. We spent the rest of the night solving those stupid take-apart-shape-and-put-them-together-again puzzles.

Sunday morning was church, had heaps of fun on the piano but it wasn't my best day (I screwed up the offering piece) but I think people just appreciated me being back on the piano, which was really nice. We had testimonies from our group heading to Cambodia for a short term mission, as well as a delicious curry lunch for fundraising. I hung around for a few hours for BASIC and then the guys went to play pool. All I can say is... black ball fail.

I went out with Dad and Uncle Tony and family to this teppanyaki place in Ponsonby called Fuji. Entertainment was fantastic, food was delicious, but unfortunately not as filling as I would have liked. Really had to work for our food as well! I caught a piece of egg in my mouth, and two bowls of rice flung in my general direction.

Met up with the youth group guys at Momo's (haha, again). I didn't cut my hand this time, which was great. I had a taro milkshake with mango pudding, but didn't feel like eating much more. We were keen on going out after that, but nothing happened and we just went to bed.

But Matt, Sam and I ventured out the next day in the blazing sun to Mission Bay, where we enjoyed some unhealthy breakfasts in the form of ice cream, waffles and pancakes. We hung around Bastion Point before heading into town. We took at stop at Yifans where Matt played the new Street Fighter - I really like the art style, with the black paint strokes. I had to rush off soon after to meet Casey, Bob, Laura and Raymond for yum char at China. Good food, again, but unfortunately I was still a bit stuffed from breakfast. However, I did manage to cram a durian puff and a mango puff, so all is well.

Spent the rest of the afternoon fixing dad's computer, then met up with my sister for a chit chat. Her cat is adorable <3 and very vocal too. Being the awesome sister that she is, she managed to get me this:



It was a quick dinner at Uncle Tony's before heading to the airport. What a weekend. Catch all the action in the gallery.

So I FINALLY FOUND MY BELOVED SOUR APPLE RINGS!!! They were in New Lynn Foodtown, and it was a huge effort trying to get to them. There were these teens standing outside Foodtown singing, of all things, lame songs from High School Musical, at an obscene volume, so I had to crank my iPod to maximum to try and drown them out. Yeah, I know, it's amazing I'm still alive. But it was worth the struggle for those sour apple rings :D Yeah I also have sour coke bottles and feijoa lollies too. Ahh, happiness comes in artifically flavoured gelatinous treats.

Yeah I managed to finish my Christmas shopping, once and for all. It was actually pretty hectic in the malls today. Lots of people, no parkin
g, long queues...eh. At least it's done and I don't have to worry about it. Oh wait, I still need to wrap everything -.- Ngoh. I suppose I'll do that tomorrow.

What else..oh yes, Sam invited me (and Matt and Sam) around to his house for a simple meal of spag bol. Following that, we went to Parnell for Chocolate Boutique, but once again we were disappointed by the huge crowd standing around. So we walked further down to Movenpick where I had a sticky date pudding :3



Also! I have updated the Gallery with more kitty pictures from Sam's Farewell. Soooo cute. I also have a few pictures to share from our end-of-year bash at Wenderholm:

With the weather a bit shaky, we decided not to head out to the east coast beaches as originally planned. Rather, we went to Mission Bay and just hung around. We were a bit delayed by Alice, because she was at home having difficulties trying to contain these two little kittens.



So cute. Sooooo cute. They were curling up in De's handbag and snoozing. They kept mrowring (in an adorably cute high-pitched mrowr). Soo cute. For more cuteness, see the Gallery.

Anyway, it got quite dark around 2pm so we headed back to church to play some Cranium. Following that we had Burgerfuel (I had the Hawaiian special burger) and skit practice for the Christmas skit.

And finally, to top the night off, we went to Momo's where I had a Taro Milkshake with Mango Pudding.

Ahh, what a night. I'm very satisfied.

I can't believe it's three weeks to Christmas. Geez. I need to do my Christmas shopping soon. In accordance with the festivities, we took my auntie to Franklin Road in Ponsonby to see the Christmas lights. They have a tradition of lighting up all the houses on the street with extravagant neon lights, and it attracts a lot of visitors.

Yeah, the lights were impressive. But if you've seen one, you've seen them all. Bleh.

We found this little one inspecting the car.

I think he found the wheels were a bit off balanced. Also, he told me we needed a bit more oil, so I must remember to top it up sometime.

What else...we had dinner at Canton Restaurant in Kingsland with my step-mum's friend from Malaysia. Oh, I went to West City and bought some sour coke bottles and feijoa lollies. Epic win. I just need my sour apple rings and sour gummi bears and then my collection will be complete.

I hate shopping -__- It's so tiring and boring, especially if you don't really know what you're buying. So you like, walk around aimlessly, trying to figure out stuff to buy, then when you've finished walking around, you've totally forgotten what you saw was good.

So yeah, we went shopping for Linh's birthday present today, at St. Lukes. In case she reads this I'm not going to spoil :O But it was a tiring experience and zzzzzzzzz and yeah I got stuck in traffic on the way home anyway.

But! Some cool things we found:
- a polar bear that goes "ROAR" when you tilt its head
- a trippy wobbling stand
- a cup with a propeller at the bottom to automatically mix your drinks (Creates a swirling vortex of power, it said)
- an ice cream cone that rotates your ice cream so you don't have to turn it when you lick it
- a mini Mahjong set

In other news, the graduation ceremonies are out. My ceremonies are:

Monday 5th May, 10:45am
Faculty of Business and Economics
- Degrees and diplomas A-F
- Bachelor of Commerce (conjoint) A-Z
- Property A-Z

Friday 9th May, 1:15pm
Faculty of Science
- Degrees and diplomas A-Li
- MSLTPrac A-Z
- Bachelor of Science (Honours) A-Z

Finally, here is a picture I took.

There's a kitty on my car 8d! (It's actually Debs car)