First week in Sydney

My first post in Sydney!
I have been trying to write a post but since my computer's harddrive was busted trying to connect to the network here, I have had to send my harddrive back to Wake since Thinkpads suck really hard.
My phone doesn't really work either and the cell phone they gave us is totally a rip off. I have spent 60 dollars in just a week on phone calls and texts!
And Whoever said textbooks are cheap here is clearly delirious! I am running out of money fairly quickly. Especially when Laundry costs $4.50 a load and $1.50 every 8 minutes to dry.
So I'm going to be old school asian and start washing my clothes in a stream. First I have to go find a stream.

However, I have not been bothered by these things too much. Or as much as I would've been. Because it's sunny here pretty much everyday! Although it's a bit chilly, it warms during the day and I have had all the time in the world to just sit in the sun and just enjoy the weather!
The town that is near where we live is called Newtown and it's a very eclectic and busy neighborhood with many amazing Thai and cute little restaurants and a bunch of really chill bars. I have had to walk everywhere but I guess that will keep the beer weight off. Getting groceries is pretty fun since the nearest large grocery store is about 2 miles away, but we just keep stealing their carts to wheel back and we get pretty funny looks on the street. But no worries since they're not being green hauling their stuff in cars and we are being super environmentally friendly!

Another cool thing was the Aroma Festival. It was a huge huge festival dedicated to coffee, tea, and chocolate from around the world. I almost had a small stroke when I heard this was happening because those things are basically my life plus air. It was a huge venue and there were lots of interesting vendors and free samples. All the pictures will be up on facebook when I get my computer back. Although internet here is per data. So uploading pictures is probably going to cost me like 10 dollars but I will do it!

Classes have started and I'm signed up for two classes at the same time. Apparently it happens here all the time so I guess I will just decide that day whether I feel like learning about Cognitive psychology or some Marine Bio! We actually have to go to the beach to measure sea stuff. I'll let you know how that goes.

But so far, Australia is awesome, people are super friendly and I think that with the sun shining almost everyday, who can be in a bad mood?
Now I'm off to get a burrito. I miss Chipotle

How Criminal Minds has Affected My Life

At first, a couple of episodes here and there during the school week seemed harmless and since almost every murder happens either in a dark house, dark woods, or a dark barn, I was not really worried while asleep in a dorm room.

Since I have been home for the summer, I have had plenty of time to watch the 5 hour marathons of both A&E and Ion for pretty much every day of the week.

There has been times where I'm going back and fourth on the channels that I can't even keep the murders straight, wait I thought it was the girl that was dead, where did the dead boy come from?

I watched a really disturbing one in the beginning of the summer and let's just say that it has ruined bbq pulled sandwiches for me. The whole time I was trying to tell myself that this is pork, pork, pork. From a pig.

AND I LOVE bbq pulled sandwiches!!

The other day I was getting gas at a not so great part of town..after getting my bbq pulled sandwich, which is ironic. While I was standing there, I felt like someone was probably watching me with a rifle to my stomach or something. So I just got the hell out of there as soon as I could. So soon that I forgot to put my gas cap back on or shut my gas door.

Of course my dad came home and was pissed and we drove to the gas station and found my gas cap nicely trampled by cars.

It's true, I'm addicted. I have become so paranoid... but maybe that's a good thing, you can never be too careful

Home!

Finally moved out!!! Even though I vowed after moving out last year that I would have less stuff this year, my dad's car was still packed and he couldn't see out the back window. oops.

Can't believe I am finally done with sophomore year, seems like yesterday I was just in the library atrium debating whether to get a fourth cup of tea to keep my eyes open.

I am really going to miss the double headed showers in my dorm, and the AC, because my parents are Africans and can't take the cold. And of course the people!! I am going to be so lonely here

Now I have a string of things to do, mainly unpacking everything and organizing before I leave for half a year! Craziness.

So excited for the trips to come, my dad has already requested an Australian wool sweater?? Apparently they're world famous. Maybe I'll take a peak at the World Expo in Shanghai.

I will try to do some cooking at home and hopefully upload some pictures.

Until then, woah, the load of laundry seems scary...

Bobby

Bobby is the driver for the shuttle from campus to the medical center. I have been taking the shuttle for two years since I work over at the medical center. He is the best and one of the most interesting people I have met.

He has silver grey hair and I don't think he has ever said anything in a harsh tone to anyone. He loves to share stories about his family and the food he cooked for them over the weekend.

One of the cutest stories I have ever heard was when he told me that he was a soldier in the Vietnam war and he fell in love with a girl in Vietnam. However she was already pregnant with another soldier's baby and that guy was nowhere to be found. He ended up taking care of her and spending time with her but he had to come back to United States and he has not been able to track her down since then. He said he kept a picture of her all those years until his wife found them. uh oh. But he said he will always remember her.

Just this Tuesday, I told him that I was going abroad for a semester, and he reassured and reassured me to be safe and come back to wake safely. Then we started talking about how he plans to retire in two years and he has been driving the shuttle since 1994 after his first retirement! I think of him as someone who needs to see people everyday and spread his cheeriness. He said that he tells his church that he meets people from all walks of life and all ethnicities on his bus and they all ride the bus peacefully. I think he having experienced warfare, takes that progress very dearly. He says he still emails people that he meets that have moved. He said this one time this girl told him she was going to Thailand and then the tsunami hit there, and he was so worried about her. That's just the person he is, he cares. I noticed that he says that he fell for that someone. I think he doesn't mean that romantically, but just that his heart is occupied by so many people.

You don't meet people like Bobby very often, I consider myself pretty lucky.

Carnival

I worked at the carnival today. Yes I was a carnie.
I ate fried oreos and snickers, I bounced around on grandpa's belly and ended up scraping my elbow.
I interacted with high school kids.
I really don't like coke cherry but I am drinking it because the vending machine made a mistake.
I don't use passive voices nor sign into other people's facebooks.
I got new sunglasses and neon green shirts!
Now onto my 8 page paper about violence and Nazis, should be interesting.

The Best of DC

I started off my spring break with a little trip to DC to see my boyfriend and Maryland to see my roomie. Because Catholic's cafeteria was closed, we were forced to eat out every meal; bad for our bank accounts, wonderful for our taste palettes!

Friday night, we ventured to Georgetown's Tacklebox, a very casual restaurant supposedly serving up delicious and fresh seafood.

Each meal comes with a fish, sides, and a sauce. The combinations are endless. I opted for the fried bay scallops with spicy marinara and salad on the side.

I am a sucker for scallops and any spicy sauce. Matt got the tilapia with mac n' cheese, sweet potatoe fries, with a lemon garlic sauce that's mayonnaise based.

The bay scallops are a little different than the regular scallops as in they're tiny and bitesized! And dipping them into the sauce was oh so yummy. Matt said his tilapia was juicy and fresh.

The restaurant has the kitchen in the open and you can see your piece of fish being plopped onto the grill. I imagine that's a good feeling.

The best thing about this dinner was the Lemonade, ohh the lemonade. The 4 dollar lemonade was extraordinary. Probably the best I've ever had. You know they put in tons of fresh lemons because the aftertaste of the fresh tartness to the sweet taste is just overwhelmingly refreshing. I wish I could've just gotten a whole jug of it, although it probably would've been very expensive. And now that I think about it, I wonder if there was FREE refill! How dumb of us not to ask! Oh well next time.

Next day we had a late lunch at chipotles so we were guaranteed to be stuffed for at least 6 hours. But we ran out of things to do and got tired of walking so we had to find a restaurant before we headed back. We settled on La Tasca, a tapas place in Chinatown. We only got three tapas

1. Spanish Omelet with onions and potatoes. Nothing really special, as in I like my omelets with a little more moisture with cheese and tomatoes in it. But it came with a nice marinara sauce that made the dish a little better

2.Mini seafood paella. This was delicious, it was moist and the right amount of tartness with the tomatoe sauce. My favorite part was that it had chicken in it which gave it some meatyness and bite. And I need my proteins please.

3. Grilled asparagus. It was drizzled in olive oil and sea salt. Such a simple dish, but it was the best as far as I can remember. I tried it at another tapas place and it was sautéed in a pan, and grilling it just gives a little crunch to the exterior that work perfectly with the softness of the center. Maybe I noticed it more because I usually have it on the side. But just delicious.

For dessert. We couldn't decide so we got both!

I got mini churros, which are fried dough with cinnamon sugar and chocolate fondue sauce.

Matt got rice pudding. It worked out well because I ended up dipping my churros in the rice pudding, and matt started putting the chocolate sauce in the pudding. Really good dessert. I really liked this tapas place because it served okay portions for tapas and they paid attention to detail. And unlike the Bodega in Georgetown, the festive atmosphere with numerous decorations on the rustic walls made the food taste a lot better, not to mention visible.

The next day we had to wait at the Chinese Embassy forEVER to get my passport done, so we ended up going to Dupont for lunch. We ended up on the street corner outside at Circa at Dupont. The atmosphere was definitely very nice, I love eating outside and just being able to watch people walk by, or in this case, protest about impeaching obama. We started off with a green mix salad. Which I probably could've whipped up if I walked into a walmart right now. Then we both got pizzas, and they were alright, but a little overpriced. And my pizza was a little dry from the lack of sauce, especially paired with dry toppings such as grilled chicken and sun dried tomatoes. Hey at least the chicken was free range. Overall, you really just pay for the location, perhaps you could go buy some chipotle down the street and bring some lawn chairs and sit next to the little fenced off area. It's probably just as delicious and you don't have to pay extra for the sunshine!

For dinner we went to Zengo in Chinatown. I have walked by it many times and have always been intrigued. It apparently means to give and to take. "We serve in small portions, even the entree sizes are pretty small, so we encourage people to order more dishes and to share", said our waitress. Pretty good marketing strategy when entrees are 18 dollars and up with "smaller" dishes 6 dollars and up. However, it was an amazing meal.

It's supposedly Mexican and Asian fusion, and I could definitely see that because every savory dish had some sweet elements to it, be it mangoes, sweet corn, or pineapple. Being raised on chinese and japanese food, combining savory dishes with anything sweet is a no no. But I was convinced otherwise that night. The menu

1. Charred tuna wonton tacos.

Three little crisply fried wontons held charred bits of tuna, sushi rice, salsa, and mango. The softness of the mango contrasted well with the crispy wontons, and tuna's bite and saltiness just popped with its spicy seasonings. Matt thought it was a little too spicy, but it was just right for me, and the sweetness of the mango really helped with the kick.

2.Pork belly with pineapple in a steamed bun

Oh this was so good. Might be my favorite. Kicked the traditional Chinese pork buns in the ass. The pork belly meat was perfectly braised and had the perfect ratio of fat to meat. I love the moisture the fat part gives off that just brings the bun and meat together. The bun was like a little taco bun, and it had good bite to it. I can't imagine putting anything sweet to a pork bun, but the salsa with the pineapples really accentuated the pork and made the savory flavor pop. Oh I can eat a dozen of them. Too bad they only give you three.

3. Matt got the chicken tandori, which is chicken in curry sauce i guess. I don't know that much about Indian cooking because I refuse to eat it. It came with some really good naan which helped me with my dish because it was a little salty.

4. I got the scallop dish and I am glad I chose that one instead of tofu or salmon.

Because it was the best scallop ever! It even beats the scallop dish I had at Stonington CT on the water which was scallops with a white béchamel sauce with Duchess potato. I guess it comes in second now.

The scallops at Zengo was perfectly crispy on the outside and rightfully soft on the inside. I am guessing they probably seared it on the pan and finished cooking by roasting in the oven. It was sitting on a bed of crispy but soft sushi rice with corn and bacon and this other cilantro based salsa. I really don't like cilantro but thankfully it was overpowered by the bacon and the saltiness of the rice. But it was a little too salty. The scallop itself could've done without all the sauce and stuff on the top, and maybe a little portion of guacamole would've been nice. It was all really yummy though and the flavored married together so well. I will never say I won't try sweet and salty together now.

Another place where I had the best donuts ever was in Rockville while visiting my rooms. At the Fractured Prune

This puts Krispy Kreme to shame. No more commercial glaze dipping with a machine. No sir.

These babies are fried and hot and hand dipped in a variety of glazes and toppings.

Such as honey glaze with cinnamon sugar, or chocolate glaze with oreo crumbles, or french toast flavor or berry flavor. I can't remember all of them but they were delicious. I now realized the melt in your mouth by Krispy Kreme is probably just a rouse to use less ingredients while charging you almost a buck for each donut. These babies have substance and are more cake like with a crispy fried covering that is dripping with sweet goodness.

I think she made a mistake taking me there because now I'm going to harass her to bring things back.

Well that concludes my rant about food. Eating out and eating good food is a hobby and I would happily give up buying clothes before giving up buying good food.

You are what you eat, and I am pretty happy with eating happy food. :)

Squirrels and Independence

So it has been a while since I have posted anything but that is because school has been crazy. I am really doubting that I'll be physically capable to work full time in the future because I have realized that I will go to extreme measures just to take nap. Extreme meaning skipping classes, which is not a good idea when I am missing class quizzes. Part of the reason that I stopped considering med school is because I know I can never keep that kind of lifestyle. I NEED my rest, more so than the average person, so I am on a quest to find a job that doesn't require me to wake up at 4 in the morning.

Right now I am in the nation's capital!! We went to walk by the national mall this morning and ended up in the National Archive. It was pretty cool seeing all the important documents in US history complied in one place. One really neat thing was that they posted letters sent to Presidents over the decades by just normal folks, and many times children, either stating a complaint or a suggestion; they also have explanations of the actions the Presidents took based on those letters. I think that is the best part about democracy is that everyone has a say, and it was interesting to see it in the archives. We also went to the Rotunda which houses the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and the US Constitution. There were some middle school kids on a school trip chattering about how much they're so glad they left the main (noncool) group, which reminds me of my middle school days. This one girl asked a question: "the declaration of independence is the constitution right?" And this security guard standing by the constitution kept telling everyone in line that Thomas Jefferson did not sign the document, he was in France at the time, he was the French Ambassador, he was not in the country, he couldn't have signed the document. Haha it was good to know, and I probably will not ever mess that question up on trivia or something.

We went to sit by the big open space on the national mall, and I saw an albino squirrel!!. Everyone who knows me well can attest to my unhealthy obsession with squirrels. They are just so cute and spaztic! And it was fearless! It was running all around the people looking for food, and of course, people can't resist their cuteness kept feeding it food. Then the birds came over, and it had to establish some territory by jumping at the birds. I bought, or asked Matt to buy fries specifically for the squirrel which he wasn't happy about and I probably looked like a five year old trying to feed a squirrel food. BUT I don't care because I can cross feeding my favorite animal off my to do list! It was overall a good day. A sunny day just makes everything better. I suggest everyone to find a park and just sit and people watch, you're sure to chuckle a bit and realize that whatever problems you have, they can be solved by playing frisbee or reading a favorite book. Well maybe not solved, but happily delayed.