I just worked out my grade going into the final exam for Accounting. It's not pretty. This means that if I don't get my act together and really study the material well, the probability of me actually failing the course is pretty darn high.

It's scary.

I've never actually had to prepare for a final exam with the fear that I will fail the course if I don't do well. Usually, I just have to think about how much better than a pass I'll achieve.

I don't think I'll be watching anymore movies or going out or going shopping in the next ten days.

Despite the fact that I'm in Australia, I still can’t shake off the anime habit. After accidentally discovering that Vikki is also a victim of the Anime addiction, I now have a buddy for my wonderful habit.

Last weekend was Animania—the annual Anime Convention in Sydney. I can’t believe the event was held at Sydney Town Hall. How did they manage to get such an extravagant place? Who did they have to convince to let a bunch of crazy anime possessed people redecorate the historical building and let people in costumes rampage around the place? Not only did I get my anime cravings satisfied at the con, I also had a lovely tour of Sydney Town Hall.

Remembering that I felt horribly left out wearing normal clothes to Anime North back home, I told Vikki to wear her plaid skirt in order to fit in. Then I realized that I’m pretty much lacking in abnormal clothing. This is the night before the con. I went over to Christa and said “do I have anything abnormal I can put on so I can fit in tomorrow?” I got a very very funny look. We gave up after 30 minutes of fruitless searching. But I didn’t wear jeans to the con. I worn what basically is a piece of fabric for a top and Christa’s short skirt. Gotta fit in, you know.

When we arrived, we were very very disappointed at the prevalence of blue jeans at the con. When you actually fit in wearing jeans to a con, that either indicates that the con is not that great or that everyone is cosplaying as the same character that happened to have jeans as a part of the ensemble. There were a couple of hardcore cosplayers though. They sorta made our day.

Okay, so it wasn’t the best con I’ve ever been to. But it’s definitely the most organized one. There were heaps of vollies (volunteers) all over the place, and there were three different queues sorting out people entering the building. There was a queue for people like Vikki and I who had to register and buy tickets upon arrival. There was another queue for people who had pre-registered online. And the third queue was to actually get into the building. A great idea, segregating people to minimize unnecessary wait time, but Vikki and I had a heck of a time figuring out which queue to be in and when. After all, the worst thing after endless waiting is finding out that you’ve been standing in the wrong queue.

Anyways. Vikki and I basically spend the entire day stalking our favourite characters to capture them on camera and watched anime.

The merchandise selection was rather disappointing. Only three stores? The good news is that I didn’t buy anything. Can you believe it?? Oh, I’m such a good girl! One of the girls at the booth sneered when I said I didn’t bring any cash.

“Who in their right mind would attend a con without cash?”

Well, if you have a very limited budget and very limited luggage space and you know the selection sucks and the price is a rip off, there is no point in buying anything is there?

I didn’t really snap back at her though. I was in a good mood.

Rating: 6.5/10.

It's my essay topic for English---supporting the use of embryos as an ethical source for stem cell research.

Of course, i have to research about the pro-lifers because it's very important to consider the other side of the argument.

Here's what Margaret Tighe, President of Right to Life Australia said about IVF:

"The reason for this is quite simple –
the whole procedure involves an inherent lack of respect for human life.
With the development of human embryos taking place in laboratories we have entered a
new and frightening age where we have a category of human beings treated as
consumer products. As a result, human embryos can now be discarded, dissected,
frozen and stored and eventually disposed of, genetically manipulated and
experimented upon – all at the whim of scientists."

and that

"Basically I.V.F. involves the treating of human being as manufactured objects. To go to
such extraordinary lengths to produce custom made babies when approximately
100,000 unborn babies are casually aborted in Australia each year is wantonness in the
extreme.
With human life now being generated in laboratories, with accompanying stock piling of
human embryos, donor eggs and sperm, the possibility now exists to create a whole
class of human being who can be treated as property and subjected to treatment which
if applied to older humans would be seen as a gross abuse of human rights."

Can you believe this woman? I wonder if she ever even entered a science classroom.

This past week was almost as stressful as it was back at Guelph. I mean, I actually had to stay at Uni til 10pm to finish up my assignments and stuff. This is nothing compared to Guelph, where I basically stay at Uni all day, 7 days a week. Therefore, you can also imagine how much work I’ve been doing for my units-of-study. Not enough, that’s for sure. The only down side is that my diet has been turned upside down. I had a peanut butter and jam sandwich and a half bag of Skittles for dinner yesterday. Bad Ching.

Last Saturday, I met up with Sina, whom I’ve met at the International Exchange fair and we hung out for a couple of hours. He’s been on exchange to U of T and also has family in Canada, so we had plenty to talk about. I must say, it’s so nice to have an Aussie show you around Sydney and tell you interesting facts about the city and pointing out the little things you’d missed walking around. Now, this experience would have been so much more meaningful if it had happened when we first arrived in Sydney back in July. Oh well, had a good time nonetheless.

I’ve been offered a Technician position at work. You know what this means…I’ll actually get to run the test on the condoms. But I declined. There’s no way I could work 20 hrs a week. Besides, I don’t see a point since I’ll be leaving in a month to travel up the coast. Seems like I just missed out on an opportunity of a lifetime *chuckle*

This is really sad.

I checked my Accounting midterm grade on Friday. Guess what I got...54%. I was genuinely relieved that I passed. I PASSED!!! YEAH!

Could you believe that Ching is actually not crying and having a nervous breakdown because of a 54%? I was balling over a 67% back at Guelph.

I guess when you are downunder, certain expectations go down as well.

Man, I truly hate Accounting.

Another update about my workplace. (I'm imagining Kyle and James are at the edge of their seats now...*shakes head*)

FLAVOURED CONDOMS!

Last Friday, I walked by one of the quality control labs on my way to the staff lunch room, said hi to the people inside, and then paused. Those are different, they are pink *looking at the dozen fluid filled condoms dangling like udders from the testing mechanism* "Yeah, they are flavoured. This one is strawberry.", said one of the guys in there. He (I forgot his name) then waved me over, held up a folded up condom to my face and said "smell it".
"mmmmm"
"nice eh? We've got banana flavoured ones too."
By then I was biting my tongue to keep myself from laughing out loud. I mean, somehow, when you picture Ching saying mmmmm to a condom, you wouldn't necessarily imagine her working as a cleaner in an Engineering consulting firm right? Enough said.

Then on Monday, as soon as I arrived at work, I realized that I'd forgotten to bring a hair elastic. Well, I was glad that I even made it to work on time. Earlier during the day, I've spent 90 mins trying to find a damn disposable aluminum foil pie plates after looking in multiple stores multiple times (Coles x2, Kmart x2 and Bi-Lo and Go-Lo). I only had 5 minutes to wolf down my lunch (not too bad since I'll have a nice Thanksgiving dinner to make up for it). So I asked the staff in the lunchroom if there's an elastic or rubber band of any sort in the lunchroom.
"You could use one of the condoms in that box over there", said one of the guys, chuckling and pointing to a box at the corner.
No, I don't think so.
Then one of the girls was nice enough to lend me hers. Now, I don't know what I would've done if she hasn't given me her hair elastic. Would I suffer having my hair in my face for 3 hrs and have to brush it out of the way with my dirty, gloved hands, or would I actually resort to using a condom?

Anyways, during our Thanksgiving celebration, Vikki also presented two huge birthday cards to the lovely birthday girls Heidi and Triona. Triona's card is extra special you see, the pictures on the cards are all cutouts from a gay porn magazine. This is all Vikki's idea, she wanted to do something extra special for Triona, but she had to go the extra mile to do it. She wanted totally uncensored shots of men, but you wouldn't get such pictures in just any porn magazine, because the content would feature only females. So Vikki made a trip to the bookstore and had to preview several gay porn magazines to find the one with the best pictures. We couldn't stop laughing after she told us her story.

Honestly, how hard can it be?

Varun moved out. The house is a heck of a lot quieter. We still had bills to settle, so he came over today so we could talk things over.

I know that when it comes down to money, the conversations are never simply conversations. There were arguments, heads shaking, sighs of frustration. I'm so sick of it all.

It's so simple, Christa and Varun just doesn't get along. Ironically, I get along fine with both of them. It's not that we don't try hard; it's not that we don't have respect for each other---it's simply because Christa and Varun have too many differences but the one thing in common is their strong, dominating personality. I know for a fact that both individuals has made sincere efforts trying to get along, but it just didn't work out.

I can let it slide if someone does something I dislike; I can be flexible and not have things my way. This is simply how I deal with relationships: you give and take. Maybe I'm being to submissive, maybe I hate confrontation, but damn it, I want peace. I'd rather be a little bit unhappy and deal with the situation as it is than to fight it out and mould things my way.

When I talk to Christa, I agree with all the things she says about Varun; I'm on her side of the argument. But when I'm talking to Varun, I also realize that he's had a lot of shit to deal with and a lot of adjustments to make, and I feel kinda sorry for him.

I really hate being caught in the middle.

I hate the fact that the only way to get the exact financial compensation we deserve from Varun is to argue with him. I hate arguments and confrontations and I'd rather lose a few dollars and have my peace, that's just how I deal with things. I know Christa would rather confront him and sort things out until we are fair and square. I'm not saying Christa's way is wrong nor am I trying to convince her to forget about everything. I mean, her strong personality is what I love about her. Besides, in theory, we have a right to get compensated. I just feel that the amount of anger, frustration, and stress we'll experience in order to get it is not worth the money at the end. I'm not happy about how things turned out, but I'd rather lose a few bucks than to continue dealing with all this ugliness.

But confrontation between Christa and Varun is inevitible. I just feel as though I'm being dragged into all this ugliness and being forced to deal with all this crap when I would voluntarily make a choice not to.

A bandana.

The only one I possess is from Shinarama, and it's bright bright orange. I brought it all the way to Sydney because it has the UoG logo on it, and I was only going to use it as room decoration. IT's been plastered onto the back of my door for over six weeks.
Along comes Multicultural Day, where people are supposed to wear orange (see I spelt that correctly!). The only orange thing I have is that bandana. So I wore it. It was then that I discovered that a bandana is a marvelous thing to have in order to cover up a bad hair day.

Note: never go to bed with wet hair unless
a) you are going to shower in the morning anyways
b) you are getting your head shaved first thing next morning
c) your current hair length guarentees that you can't have a bad hair day
d) you have a full tool kit of styling products such as gel, hair spray, hair straightener, etc so that it doesn't matter what your hair looks like when you stumble out of bed the next day AND that you also have the time to do the do.
e) you have a handly cover up such as a hat or a bandana.

It's been awhile. Thank God our roadtrip to Melbourne was jam packed with activities, otherwise, I don't know how I'd survive without a computer for a week.

It was good.

It was very very good.

In fact, it was awesome.

Some noteworthy moments from our trip:

During our short stay in Canberra, we saw the most gorgeous sunset on the way home from the War Memorial. Since we got on the wrong bus, we went around and around most of the streets of Canberra. WIth only four people on the bus, all of whom were visitors, the bus driver took the liberty to be a tour guide and told us stuff about the places we were passing. While passing a particularly beautiful lake decorated with black swans along with the gorgeous sunset as the backdrop, Vikki asked the bus driver to stop for a moment so she can snap a photo. He stopped and half the bus (now with about 10 passengers) got off the bus for a picture. And he almost left one of the passengers there and drove away.

First night out in Melbourne, Christa walks straight into a pole. A very un-Christa moment indeed. It was one of those flexible wire cables running from the ground to the traffic light. I was walking two steps behind Christa on the extreme right hand side of the road (it was dark so I figured that I can revert back to the North American system and not smash right into anyone), and Christa at that precise moment was looking down and concentrating on getting her sweater sorted out. I noticed the wire. Christa was still shuffling. She swadded a little to the left while advancing towards the wire pole. Oh, she noticed the wire, I thought. SMACK. No, No she didn't. Vikki turned around after hearing Christa's surprised reaction. Apparently, Vikki didn't notice the pole either, but she was walking on the left side of the road, where people are supposed to be walking. Thank goodness the pole was made of flexible wire...otherwise it would surely leave a mark and Christa's beautiful face would be absent from some of the photos.

Ching manages to loss both her and Vikki's toothpaste in the hostel, so she had to buy Vikki a new tube.