Dumpster diving

I forgot to write about this before, but I had attended two workshops organised by RMIT some weeks ago. One was a “How to Find Part-time Jobs in Australia” workshop where I did utilise the knowledge I have gained to try looking for some jobs but I decided against it in the end—as it is I’m too busy to even have a proper day to myself. The other one that I had also attended was called “Maximize Your Creativity” workshop, held on 20th of August, from 1230pm to 130pm—I was about 15 minutes late (another girl entered the room in Carlton Library at the same time as me) and there was only 4 of us lmao. But I came out inspired by it to jot down things in a notebook I bought for $10 from Borders at Chadstone weeks ago.

Despite all that workload pouring on me, I did manage to find time to go out for a bit—again, they’re CouchSurfing events.

Monday, 31st August 2009

National Day or not in Malaysia, I didn’t have that spirit whatsoever. As this week was a mid-semester break, I didn’t have any classes and took the opportunity to go to my uni’s computer lab, and later on met up with Michael near the State Library as he was studying there as well. We then went together (hopped on a tram) to Don Tojo, located at 164 Cardigan St, Carlton, touted as a Japanese restaurant with a blend of South American.

We reached there early some minutes before 6pm despite overshooting it, then came Maria the Finnish lady who’s working in a research lab or sommat—it was too bleeding cold outside so we decided to wait inside instead, and sure enough the rest of the troop starts to stream in.

Selina, who’s half-Malaysian half-Canadian, organised the Foodies Night for the month—the Japanese food at Don Tojo was cheap by Melburnian standards, and prices range from $6.00 to $8.30, the latter was for a sukiyaki teriyaki bento set which was fairly filling. The place has an odd Japanese/South American fusion charm to it—it’s a small cafe-ish place where they even have a bar decorated with South American trinklets and a flag (which I did not recognise), with Spanish songs blasting from the speakers.

Bobster (Melburnian who works in London), Cam, and Maria. I was pretty much quiet as usual.. >_>

Most of them left early, so when the small batch of us left at about 9, Michael decided to do a spot of dumpster diving at a nearby Bakers Delight and I decided to tag along to experience what it’s like wtf.

Michael’s two loaves of bread in his bag WTF.

Yeah there were tons of loaves of breads and some buns left very nicely in said dumpsters—you’d be amazed at this incredible waste when they could’ve donated them to a soup kitchen or an organisation for the homeless or something. Would’ve taken the loaves but I didn’t have any plastic bags with me and I wasn’t about to carry a loaf of bread in a tram or on the streets like that in winter. But I did pick out a sesame seed bun (which was somewhat cold to the touch) and ate it. And no, I had no stomach upsets.

Tuesday, 1st September 2009

It’s spring!

Apparently it’s automatically deemed as spring whenever Australia walks through the doors of September, but clearly the weather wasn’t the slightest bit spring-y in any way—temperature still hovers anywhere between 6 degrees to 20 degrees (out of this entire week, there was only a day where it has the maximum temperature of 20 degrees Celcius—finally) depending on weather and wind conditions.

And so I went for what could possibly be my final round of dumpster diving.. at Queen Victoria Market WTF.

This was organised on CouchSurfing by Lindsay and it was an entirely bizarre new experience. There were about 6-7 people who were interested but the ones that turned up were only 4: me, Michael (the both of us seemed to be always the earliest in CS events), a Polish girl called Aga, and Lindsay himself (who was late by 15 minutes). We met at the corner of Elizabeth St and Victoria St, before heading off towards the already-closed Queen Victoria Market—Aga was clearly unnerved by what unraveled before her as both Mike and Lindsay were going through the dumpsters with their hands and picked out veg that looked edible wtf.

I didn’t exactly help that much, but Lindsay did chuck a few things my way into my plastic bag, plus the security guards and forklift drivers plainly ignored us.

After nearly an hour frolicking in trash WTF I went home with my collection of edible veg (and a fruit): a cauliflower, a pumpkin, some zucchinis, a cucumber, some baby potatoes and tomatoes (threw the latter away).

Prolly my first time ever using a knife (which I got for free from Woolworths QV just by watching someone presenting a knife that would supposedly be sharp forever) to cut and prepare something.. and it was easier than I thought. Look at how nicely skinned the zucchini and pumpkin were .

An odd-looking unidentified yellow veg thing.

I threw them all into a pot and slowly boiled them with water, salt, black pepper, minced ginger, and chicken stock. It actually didn’t taste too bad, but the veg was just too godawful that I had to throw all of them out. Plus my stomach felt really weird after that—either it’s because that’s all I had for dinner, or I had drank too much soup wtf.

Wednesday, 2nd September 2009

Woke up at 6.30am for an Investment group discussion that would supposedly start at 8am fml. This was the earliest I’ve ever woken up since arriving in Melbourne—and my two other group members only decided on this time as it was the only time slot that was free for the group discussion at our Business Library. I arrived about 20 minutes late, and the subsequent 2-3 hours were rather uneventful as we got stuck on trying to calculate the expected return for the stock of Adelaide Brighton.. until I took over and googled it, found someone asking the same question in Yahoo! Answers (or sommat), said answer asked the enquirer to refer to a book called Financial Modeling by Simon Benninga which was actually available in our library, and we found our answer in said book. Perfect.

Ate lunch with Estee, then I pretty much stayed back for a while before heading back to cook an early dinner and went to a free comedy night organised by Marde—she was originally selling them for $5 each, but when there were very few takers and she had an excess of tix, she gave them out for free and so I decided to go. It was located at The Comics Lounge, 26 Errol St, North Melbourne, and I absolutely knew where it was ‘cause I passed by it before to access the nearest post office to my place (to collect a parcel sent by my dad at that time)—it was a mere 7-minute walk away according to Google Maps.

I arrived at about 8.15pm after getting a little lost (yeah.. it’s hard to see road signs at night especially when the area was a little quiet too) before I asked a passer-by who pointed me the right way. Michael was there again, along with Vicky from the UK (I think), a Melburnian guy who was at the Foodies Night (forgot his name), and Marde herself. And it was a blast, imagining laughing non-stop with three intermissions by a variety of stand-up comedians—there was even a pair of adult twins (The Nelson Twins) with long beards wtf.

Fucking hilarious would be how I’d put it—you have to be above 18 to attend (supposedly), and understandably so as the jokes were adult by nature, and you have outrageous jokes across the spectrum of topics you could pick from: sex, masturbation, killing animals, homosexuality, racism, latest news.. and I’m proud to say that I understood a few Aussie jokes because I know its geography and telecommunications company wtf. Couldn’t understand a few others though as I didn’t follow the local news that much as I didn’t subscribe to a newspaper here.

Overall, it was wild and fun. Even better was when Marde proceeded to give us three tickets each (I dunno if I could use them though as they were supposedly for that night, there was even a date stamped there, but she told us we could call and ask), and on our way out, we got a double pass each for Monday nights for free!

And I reached home at about 11pm, a little later than I had anticipated—but I had, again, a pretty exciting time.

Friday, 4th September 2009

It was ballroom dancing night again at Enrique’s, and this time Estee didn’t come with me as she had tests to study for despite agreeing earlier. This time around though, Enrique rushed through each dance (though he brought along two other female dance instructors with him from where he worked at), but still, it was great to refresh the basic moves I’ve learned. Tim wasn’t there, but there were other familiar faces like Sian, Ruth, and David.

Dancing.

We learned an additional dance, the tango—and boy was it extremely complicated.

The event was free, but we were asked to bring along a bottle of wine or some tidbits—I ate a lot of the crackers there too, should look for ‘em at the supermarket one day.

This pic doesn’t do the bathroom any justice, but it was strangely romantic—in fact the entire house’s decor was revolved around fairy tales or something. There were floating candles in the bathtub, lots of potted plants and perhaps fake greens around, with a faint trace of something sweet. It’s a really lovely house that belies its exterior.

I had wanted to go back at around 11.40pm-ish to catch the last train home, but David told both Ruth and me that he drove and could drop us at Richmond Railway Station. So we did stay longer till 12.20am-ish, and when I reached the station, there was no more train to the city.. -__- but I did manage to catch the last tram back to Flinders St. I was too lazy to walk back, so when I saw a couple of police officers at the railway station, I asked one of them, who snidely replied, “You can look at the screens, mate”—’cause I did, otherwise I wouldn’t have asked.

I looked up Metlink’s website online and found out that there was a tram nearby that was still operating and heading towards Swanston St / La Trobe St, which I promptly utilised. Then I made my way home on foot and reached home at 1am+ when I could’ve reached home at least an hour earlier. -____-

I’m heading to Mt Buller tomorrow and would—gasp—see/touch/feel snow for the first time ever! Although Ethan who just went there on Tuesday a few days ago told me that the snow was already melting (yet he’s still going again lol). I’m even more excited to utilise a new GPS program, GPSToday, in my phone that would not take up much battery (supposedly), so I’m gonna test it out and geotag my pictures from Mt Buller and upload ‘em to Flickr. =D In fact, Friday’s pics have been geotagged using the aforementioned program, and when I get around to uploading them, I look forward to see it appearing on Flickr. :)

This is going to make my travelling pictures even more interesting than ever, with GPS coordinates embedded into the EXIF data of the photos. The possibilities of utilising this feature are endless.

And, after reading my Investment textbook a lot lately, I’m giving taking up CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst), a self-study professional programme that would last for anywhere between 18 months to 4 years, early next year a serious thought.