Fireant

Linda Li

We are official :) In my opinion there was no defining 'moment' that brought us together. However should there be a date to remember, it would have to be the 24th May (Origin game 1 :]). We had been for coffees earlier on and it was then i truely got to know her. Without airing too many info linda and i have similar personalities.

Other than that, today i completed an assignment hours before it was due. This breaks my 7 year drought!

Parents are back from Europe. It seems they had a grand time and have been sleeping off the jetlag. Unfortunately i must say that things are back in their old habits. Mother has a dominating personality that is forceful and set in their ways. Argh, combine that with mine and there will always stress and tension between the two of us.

Out of all my chinese weekly quizes, the one i attempted yesterday (30th) was definately my best. If i do not pass, i will be spewing! Another Chinese assessment tomorrow on 'interests' and dictionary skills.

The opposite sex

Characteristically, what makes women - women? Some traits popped into my mind.... that being women are more so unpredictable, emotional and more talkative/sociable about their lives. I came across a website that pointed out society establish gender roles: i thought it was an interesting read.

That said, the past few days were eventful! Thursday the Civil and Environmental Engineering Harbour cruise was held. I scored free entry as my logo was chosen to represent CEVSOC (the civil and environmental engineering society). Although the weather was cold we danced the night away, dined on pizza and sipped down some New(tooheys). Friday, recovery day. Dogged Jason's 21st (sorry!). Had a long conversation (2-3hrs?) with Evelyn instead.

Saturday night was Dot's 21st party. Dinner was at the Machiatto (sorry i'm not a coffee drinker and i'm sure i got the spelling wrong!) located at the cnr of Liverpool and Castlereigh St. The italian food combined with the atmosphere won me over. Karaoke followed, Dot's best friend belted out quite a few tunes :s We then went to Carlyn's place and hung around playing 'Never ever'. Before we knew it 3am snuck up.

Woke up, lymph nodes flaired around my throat. Possibly due to the combination of sharing drinks, dodgy glasses, the cold weather, lack of sleep and poor diet :p 1pm, Tone and i tried out for the UNSW touch team. We made it :) It was great to be challenged for once, i thoroughly enjoyed it. Dinner time, ate at a Korean buffet in Chatswood. Nathan and i invited our grandparents (yeayea and mama). They told us quite a fair bit about their feeling about our father and mother. They also gave us an insight as to what life was like in 1948. My grandfather worked damn hard to get his family here. What has come his way, he thoroughly deserves. Oddly, they were rather interested as to whether i was single or not. They proceeded to interrogate :/

On that note, i will goto bed. Have a good week!

..nice week thus far!

First and foremost, the weather. It's been freezing! Apparently we endured the warmest april in 'living memory' - the sudden change in temp and rainfall has caught alot of people off guard.

Touchfooty. Craphouse game, we won 3-1 - attack lacked direction, continuity, defence got owned with poor numbering up. Got lucky thanks to tone's classic run thru. Highlight: Being invited (along with tone) to try out for UNSW unigames team. Although its nothing big, its always an honour having a good player identifying your skills and asking you to come along.

Civil Engineering. Apparently my logo design won! The civil and environmental engineering society had a comp to design the new logo, yay! As a result i didn't have to pay for my harbour cruise ticket!
On top of that, i have finished designing the cevsoc wbsite. However, since the change over of the civil engineering website won't happen until august, i need to model it back on the 'old' website.

Harbour cruise! - it was cold, but bloody awesome! great to see many faces outside of classes. Everyone hit the piss, was a pretty fun night. Appart from having our pizza confiscated by the captain (apparently we had too many pizzas among our group), there was a live band upstairs whilst RnB, hiphop was playing below. I cant wait to see the photos from that night!

Studies: carving up, however still being owned in chinese....

What the?!

LeBron James - amazing 3 pointers

Monday touchfooty comes to an end

Ahh! The season is over, it proved to be an awesome one at that. On the final night of competition the weather was cool, the grounds were moist and shrouded in low lying fog. I guess the temp would of been around 8-10deg, then again Jacq and i stepped out from a toasty 323 :/ Regardless of a victory, Team Suss would finish 5th meaning non-qualification for the finals series.

How the game panned out
We did good. Striking form late in the season we went into this game confidently. The first 5 minutes we squandered possession with poor handwork and lazy dummy half plays. I went thru to the line but with unco hands, did not ground the ball properly(it was going to happen sooner or later!). Fortunately we did not conceed a try. Anyhow my memory is terrible when it comes to recalling tries, however what i do remember is setting up the first of the night. We put on a second, and then conceeded a soft try due to crappy 1 v 1 defence. By half time i sensed that some people felt that they'd been shot in the foot, quek copped a bitchslap to the back - so that got him fired up.

In an attempt to maintain composure we were blessed with possession and from the first play i was lucky to slot in as first reciever. What i do remember is being a pain in the butt and slowing down the play to compose our game play. With a fair bit of luck we were able to go thru for a try. Our second half of the game was somewhat lazy. No one was coming onto the ball, possession remained 1:1 however territorially we were working alot harder on defence. This resulted in two more tries against however by this stage we'd stamped our mark and finished victors 5-3. I had an awesome game, it felt good being able to manipulated the defence :D Perhaps i'll write some more after speaking to the boys about the game. Recall an earlier entry:

Season Prediction

First few games will prove interesting. There will be alot of shoddy footwork, teamplay and movement on our behalf. Just like our first few games, the newbies may feel the pinch of playing 'pro-comp'.
Common sense, our first few games were marred by soft tries.

Pre-midseason, tone will still be dropping gimmies, the girls will still ask for more ball. The newbies will understand that they need to run onto the ball.
Around this point in time admittedly the girls weren't getting equal share of posession. However, i think they realised towards the end of season that it wasn't about gender, it was about coming onto the ball :) Tone successfully dropped the occasional 1-2 tries but thats ok.

Midseason to end run we will have our first intercept try, creativity and plays wont work as the initiative will be low but the discipline will be awesome. By now steve leads the league in tries, assists and intercepts and Quek sinbins 4 players in 5 mins whilst refereeing social comp.
We had a few intercept tries, i can only recall 1 from yours truely, and the outstanding intercept from Tone. After the game he stated that he couldnt gauge where the line was so he thought it'd be a good idea to dive onto the ground and slide. yea!! I'm sure there were more. Disipline was awesome. we were carving up mid field, and the lack of creativity meant we were spreading non-effectively. Steve did not lead the league in tries, assists and intercepts but had fun. Quek, to my knowledge, did not break his Personal Best of 2 in 10mins and in my opinion should work on that.

End season the team have made the finals an are chugging along like a well oiled machine. Dennis coathangers a fat chick and in the process fractures his collarbone, University exams are up and the team concedes the grandfinal victory. *cough* We anticipated our exams and figured 'why bother playing the finals series in the first place?'. So like a well oiled machine we mastermind 5th place.

Mark my words...
Ok, i've gotta work on my predictions.. Overall, everyone improved individually, the team effort improved, we made new friends, we yelled at each other, we had a group huddle(!), alex scored a try!, we came away with memorable moments. Cya next season.

And to cap off the week!

Basketball:
With the boys from uni, Team Rice won their first game for the season. With a full roster, Jason Ang imo was MVp with his range, shots and drives. Personally i scored some pull-ups and a free throw! We lacked height (again) however Jase and Jason dominated rebounds defensively.

Touch:
Team is coming along sweet-as! we put on about 8 tries to 0. Opposition had some lazy defense so we carved up by isolated the defenders, or simply, running the gap. Played a sweet game, 1 intercept, other tries and a few assists.

Funnies from LowB

Priorities

Living just with my brother is somewhat scary! By no means is he a danger to live with, infact he's far from life-threatening. Its scary to me because i see it as a precurser to what life would be like living 24-7 with a partner (who values have different weighting). My brother is normal. He places himself first - a trait i do not dislike. This is reflected by the way he carries himself and the actions he does within our home.

The way that i am condition, i will always try to put myself in other peoples position, and similarly; i try to put people in my situation. From this stems my values of consideration for others. This is the main difference between my bro and i.

My interpretation of his actions is as follows: If he gains nothing from an action, why bother doing it? - even if its family. The first few encounters i have had since my parents have left, i must admit i began by firing up. But why do i care so much? Consequently it doesnt really affect me, who am i to boss him around and say that my weighting on values is best or even correct?

Which leads me to the conclusion that i am not satisfied with my life. I do not place myself first, or at least, i don't place myself first enough. A quick analysis why i don't do so:
~To distract myself from daily issues one encounters.
~To feel as sense of belonging.
~To satisfy my nature to help others.
~To treat people the way i want to be treated by others.

As a consequence of putting others before me, it has clearly affected me negatively on my academic progress. Don't get me wrong, im not going all depressed and downcast on myself :) it just that its been on my chest for the past few hours.

What has been happening

Parents overseas
As of yesterday my parents and sister tookoff for Europe via Singapore. 4 weeks of pure luxury! On that note, 4 weeks from now we will be in week13 at uni which means greater self disipline will be needed. I will miss their company in many ways however having that extra bit of freedom, it feels as if a wet towel has been taken off my head!

Parties
Since my last post there have been quite a few 21sts going on. Sean had his friday week ago at his place in Artarmon. The theme was 'uniform', dennis went in his scrubs, dot as a french maid, quek as a venturer(sp?-scouts), and i as a blackstump employee. It was a good night to catch up with the sydney uni crowd as i rarely get the chance to hangout with em outside of touchfooty. I had a great night except for the fact that it was pretty cold and that i ate some dodgy food. Going to bed at 1:30-2:00, i awoke with a empty and nauseating feeling in my upper abdomen, just near my solar plexus(sp). Slightly disorientated from sleep, i sat up and immediately felt the urge to puke then and there. Stumbling in the dark i lucky got my door open, got to the bathroom and hurled. Thinking that was that (usually after 1 chunder i'm feeling pretty good), i was as expected feeling hungry so i ate some bread. Still not feeling great i went back to bed. 40 minutes later, the same thing happened. And again. And again. This continued for a good 5-6 episodes over a period of 5 hrs. I reached the point of dry renching, i wouldnt wanna wish that sensation on anyone!

Consequently i had to cancel work and was too ill to get out of bed all day saturday and most of sunday.

Keiran also had his 21st party, located on a catamaran cruising Sydney harbour. I brought along Benidetta, Beatrice and their mate Jaime as i thought it would be an awesome experience for them. It was a great night, good company with the info-sysers, other civils also onboard. The food was delicious, the night was not too cold and i reckon we all had a good time. I can't wait to see the photos!

And more recently my beloved jacq celebrated her 21st last friday! The theme was Cocktail and there was quite abit of eye candy floating around. It was held at Manly 16ft skiff/yatch club, across from the aquarium and wharf. Man, i have never tasted such a delicious and wide variety of finger food! Bruchetta(sp) varieties, deep fried tender chicken, squid/calamari, strawberries with cream and chocolate cake, it was THE best food i've had a 21st. The night was also beautiful, met alot of jacq's mates from here and there - they were nice intelligent peeps.

Sports
Thursday touch comp at uni, we creamed the opposition. With the injection of Victoria to the team, we carved up with the extra girl. Scored 2 tries from brilliant passes and ballwork.
Last Thursday, i played my first competitive game of bball since year6! It was awesome to get back out there. We went down by 30-35 pts or so due to a lack of intensity and height. Personal low/highlight was intercepting a weak pass, dribbling 3/4 of the court, going for a classic left handed layup, and missing. An outstanding memory because in my previous game i also did exactly the same thing.
Tonight, we played AWESOME. Due to easter holidays we played two games back to back in the time period of one. The first game, we played a team who going from memory we had lost to narrowly. I will get the stats later. Anyhow, we just played excellent with a girl down, and with limited guy subs. The dedication and smart play from the team was memorable - it was fun to be out there. I scored 2 tries in the first game due to excellent dummy and clever passes from teammates who opened up the area for me. It was satisfying because we were out numbered the whole game. 4-1?
The second game, was also great fun however we drew 2-2. The game opened with the opposition (a decent side, i believe coming second - brown shirt team) planting the easiest of tries from a quick cycled steam-train. With the damage done, personally i picked up the intensity - i hope i brought along others with me. I did alot of yelling/talking, mainly trying to keep plays simple and slow. We dominated territory with out simple gameplan, however lacked serious threat down the middle. With both games, we clearly frustrated the opposition as they started picking on each other and dropped the ball. Always a good sign :D We drew the game from clever play from the boys, quek doing the hard yards setting up a try. The second try, was exhilirating to watch. With quick feet, tone intercepted the loose bass (miracle!) and put the pedal to the metal. To be honest, id say 9/12 peeps on the field gave up. The other two who were just split from tone's intercept gave chase. It was awesome watching tone at full speed, with an even faster guy cutting in on him. To cap it off, tone without his glasses dived to seal a draw.

Personally out of all teams it was the most satisfying drawing against this team. In some aspects i envy their depth of speed, skill and tactics, and on another note i totally hate them for their bad sportsmanship and general attitude. Thus making the draw that much sweeter.

Midsessions
Have gone great, except for Chinese. I've resigned to the fact that no matter how hard i try, i will never been top of the class. A combination of the other students having greater knowledge from their background, as well as the way my brain operates, i struggle recalling characters and listening to what is being said.