Pages

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Motivation seeping away

Oh my god. I have been awfully unproductive the past few days ever since last Friday. Did not complete my readings for tute on Monday, have not start working on an essay which I had planned to during the weekend and just absolutely no motivation to start reading anything else! The only thing I achieved was completing my weekly homework early for one of my courses! That is by far the most interesting course, the course on Asian Visual Cultures. Even though it’s all about art and film, and can be a little difficult to write about, but compared to the rest of my courses it’s the most interesting one. The rest are just… snooze-worthy.

image

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Cooking…

I’ve decided that I cannot keep having stir-fry chicken with vegetables or ra-myeon or tom-yam noodles or sandwiches for the rest of the 8 months in Brissy. I’ve also decided to take cooking a little more serious and attempt to up my cooking skills. This, I will start from mastering Korean dishes!

So far out of all the Korean dishes, I have made Korean pancakes and Spicy Rice Cakes (with instant sauce) before. After an evening of home-made Korean “feast” with my housemates last week, I honestly still need lots of improvements  for those even though I have cooked them multiple times. Yesterday I made two new attempts at the Spicy rice cakes (떡볶이) and Korean bean paste stew (된장찌개). Instead of using instant sauce, I made  spicy rice cakes from scratch, using hot pepper paste, chilli powder and dried anchovies.

It was a little tad salty, but other than that I thought it was pretty good. Hehe.

IMG_5003[1]
Oh I added instant noodles, so it should be called Ra-bokki (라볶이) instead. Ramyeon+ ddukbokki.

For the Korean bean paste stew, I went online to Korean search engine naver.com to look for a simple recipe. Actually I skimmed through several bean paste stew recipe but I used the naver recipe as my base point and started from there. Apparently there are different (but not big in variation) ways to make a stew (찌개) be it bean paste stew or Kimchi stew, etc.

IMG_5004[1] 
Ingredients I used for the stew. (I didn’t use carrot)

IMG_5005[1]
Boiling stew, looking good.

IMG_5006[1]
Ready to eat. Boiling stew looks better with the spring onions on top… :P

I actually modified the recipe a little since I don’t exactly have all the ingredients needed to make an exact same stew but I want to make one that Koreans usually make. It’s a little difficult to do so since I have to go to the city to get ingredients. Oh wait, a new Korean shop just opened around this area, I should go and check it out. :P

Anyway as I’ve stated in Facebook, the taste of the stew didn’t taste too bad but I definitely need more practise. However, since I don’t eat a lot of Korean bean paste stew at Korean restaurants, I’ve forgotten how they should taste like! Yesterday I was not really sure if it tasted right although the taste itself was okay, but does it have that Korean taste, I’m not so sure. I need to go to a Korean restaurant soon to do “research”. Lol.

Of course, I am not going to restrict myself to just Korean food, it is just my starting point.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

One of my favourite LDR songs

Do you think time
Would pass us by
'Cause you know I'd walk
A thousand miles
If I could
Just see you...

If I could fall
Into the sky
Do you think time
Would pass me by
'Cause you know I'd walk
A thousand miles
If I could
Just see you
If I could
Just hold you
Tonight

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

My timetable

Thank goodness my courses are finally decided! After half a day of running around the campus, meeting advisors and waiting for the Language and Cultural Studies school manager, I am finally up with four courses instead of two. Here’s my timetable:

Capture

Obviously the cross ones are not my classes. As shown, I have two massive breaks in between classes in a week. There will be so much waiting to do this semester. Argh! But I’m really glad my courses have been sorted out and it will be such a “colourful” semester because the courses I’m taking differ from each other completely.

Here’s the list of my 4 courses:

  1. Buddhism (Religion)
  2. Asian Visual Culture (Art and media)
  3. Crossing Bridges: Intercultural Communication
  4. Problems in Asia-Pacific Security (Politics).

It’s crazy yet interesting to be taking a whole variety of genres in a semester! Now this is Asian Studies, where you learn everything and anything in regards to Asia.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Can’t believe it!

I always think that super hardworking people are just insane. They’re just crazy people who can be so disciplined that they cut themselves from all outside world, stay in their room/library, at their desks and study FOR HOURS. Yes I admire them, but I think these people are just mental! How does one just keep studying for hours without distractions, I do not know! And these people, in return of their hard work get brilliant results, like perfect scores!

The thing is, I can’t believe my BF is one of them! O_O;

It’s only the first week of school but he’s mugging like it’s the exam period. –_-; Sometimes I am pretty sceptical when he tells me that he’s been studying the whole day, cooped up in the library. But his ALL-KILL results from last semester tells me that it is true and also why would he lie to me (unless you know..?). But the thing is I have every reason to believe that he really has been cramming a lot. And he says he’s going to to cram like this for the rest of the year.

O_O!!

But he says, it’s a highly competitive society in Korea so he has to work super duper hard!! When I say he’s crazy, he says there are thousands more Koreans in the country studying like that too.

I’m not really complaining here, because I know it’s a good thing that he’s hardworking and smart and gets ALL-KILL results. It’s just that I can’t believe he’s my BF!

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Has school started?

It has been almost a week since I came back to Brisbane. Coming back again feels like the 3 months away in SG never happened. Like the vacation was just a figment of my imagination… which is similar to my 6 weeks with A. :/

Anyway, the first week of classes was just… erm, wait- what classes?? See, I only attended TWO classes this week because so far, only TWO subjects are listed in my timetable. It was such a SLACK week I didn’t feel like I attended any classes at all. Double :/

It’s just that my Korean major classes are not confirmed yet because I’ve already taken all the classes being offered this semester. The problem is I need to take two classes this sem to complete my BA on time and continue my honours the next sem. With a loooooot of effort in attempting to discuss this issue with my prof (he is very very busy), I managed to contact him today and he said he may have some solution but needs to consult another prof on this. So I have to wait on it… until he contacts me again. T-T Korean major can be so frustrating at times…

About my TWO classes, OH EM GEE. Haha, you cannot believe what I’m taking. I’m taking Buddhism and Asian Visual Cultures. Buddhism is religion, obviously… and taking a religion class for academic purpose is kind of new to me. Especially since I’ve been growing up with Buddhism around me (my dad), yet I know nuts about it. Gosh, my dad’s a Buddhist yet I have superficial knowledge about the religion. Honestly… I don’t have much interest in it, but I have no choice but to take this course because the other courses are worst. ^^;

The other class is more of an ART and MEDIA class. I have to decipher certain meanings behind why a certain art is like that or why certain films are made like that. OMG, it’s not that easy BUT the prof is very lenient and nice. I’ve attended his classes for 3 semesters so he sorts of remembers my name and even said “welcome back” to me when he took the attendance. :p I love his classes actually, because he likes to use visual aids like videos/photos/etc during his classes and tries to make them more interesting.

So I don’t even feel like classes have started because there are only 2 classes. Haha.. but it was nice meeting up with my friends in Aus! Miss hanging out with them. :)

I hope my Korean classes get fixed soon…