I had to say this.

You know what *isn’t* awesome? AUJS revue. I’ve had the song “Gone on so long, AUJS Revue has gone on so long. It feels like it’s been forever, and ever, and ever…”

The show I’m doing at uni called Last Post. Luisa wrote it with the cast and though some of her ambitions for the show I raise my eyebrows in askance, it’s terrific. The actresses are all awesome and they sing so well. I’ve had the song People Get Ready in repeat in my head. I’ve actually made choral gospel gowns like she requested (though to the barest minimum) but I’m short one because I ran out of material. There will be a lot of me rushing around this arvo and sewing in the socs office. I’ve got 2 skirts I need to make up, glittery hats to buy and timl to corner and get his gear.

I had an awesome weekend.On Friday arvo I managed to .friends stalk Jen and hung out with her. And funnily enough when I turned up to her terminal she was reading my blog! In all it’s awesome pinkness!

I then went to Giong Ca Vang for TNTT on Friday night where we reperformed our mothers day sketch on request from Cha Chi. Because I’ve seen it gone so much better, I was a bit sad. We didn’t know the layout of the stage well, we had projector problems, we had no side wings to cover our props and we totally missed a scene with the flag. The music on the night though some of the singers were good, some were really really terrible. I spent a lot of the evening gossiping with Thao. We totally got gipped on food, but the organising committee gave us some money to buy food (as we only got fried rice, spring rolls and soup as opposed to the menu everyone else was getting) which Chi Hang and Anh Trung promptly spent on ice cream for all. =D

Saturday I had an extra babysitting session with Sam Sam as his parents were at a luncheon with clients. It was fabulous playing with Sam. We went to Centennial Park and he played with the sand and got himself incredibly dirty. He got really scared of the Ibises that were walking around and he like tried to hide himself in me and said “Bird. Go Away.” It was like uber cute. And then he was such a good boy that afternoon. Ate all his lunch (including desert of half a Weiss bar) and then straight down for a nap. As they say, it was a total walk in the park. lol Then Sam’s parents drove me all the way home which was awesome.
Then Saturday night I went to Casaween, a halloween party at the house that a few friends of mine fancifully call the “Casa Del La Mansex” Twas terrific to see Catie and Nicholas again. I dressed rather Victorian and I was glad due to teh chilly weather. Though trashy Halloween dress up is hott – it was nice to not be so. I’ve been told by Thao that the reason why I have instant credibility with Viet parents is because I dress like a nun – but without the habit. Nancy reinterpreted this to mean ‘sensible’. I usually can’t be stuffed to primp up unless I have someone I want to take notice of me. (In the boy scene, I’m totally interested in someone right now – but chances are I’ll get rejected. So don’t be surprised if I’m vaguely primped up)
And Sunday was my costuming day with a degree of success. I bought a few night gowns at Bankstown markets. However, I am shocked that the bookseller sells Mills and Boons for over $1! That’s just highway robbery. So I DIDN’T buy a trashy novel (happy now David?).

I also managed to catch David on the phone on Sunday night. It’s rare that I get to talk to him and we had a lovely chat. =D
Also, I’ve been in such a good mood (well except to my mother) that I’ve been talking like a bimbo. I’m like incredibly excited about things!

And to round off all good things, I managed to finish my finance tute homework *before* I turned up to uni this week. (Granted this was an incredibly brain dead tute)

But there is some agony in all this. My mothers continual harassment about what I’m doing and where I’m going. I can’t wait to move out of here. =S

mia

Sorry to be a traitor to my fellow Vietnamese Australians, but I get a lot of email from them.

Lack of proper grammar. I mean who am I one to preach considering my grip on grammar is tenuous at best in my colloquial, lazy way of speaking. But having an incorrect grip of sentence structure and then compound the sin by using verbs in the wrong tense and using nouns as verbs tend to make my brain hurt. I complaint too much, me tire.

Lazy typing. The most I try to be really lazy is my lack of use of periods and proper capitalisation, but some people take it to extremes. It so gr8 dat u save time.

Talking in third person. This has really annoyed mia ever since mia was a child. They do this in Vietnamese too, but mia finds this extremely jarring.

Lack of use of Unicode encoding. I get documents where I have to spend non-trivial amounts of time finding the font for. I am aware that this is because the systems people use to type Vietnamese are older than the Unicode standard and apparently you can’t teach people new tricks. And then there is (despite that Unicode is available) people typing emails to me without the appropriate phonetics. My understanding of written Vietnamese is limited, but the lack of phonetics makes everything go downhill. It’s a bit different just having a Vietnamese name in an English email without phonetics compared to a whole passage without phonetics.

I’m like totally psyched out! Things are still vaguely on the down side but a bright paint of optimism is within me at the moment.

I met Millard at the 895 bus stop today. I haven’t spoken to him in like 3 years! It was cool to see him. He’s done really well for himself – got a mortgage, a fiance and job. The downside is that now he’s an accountant. He gave me a lift home. I then proceeded with my conquest of Asian parents and making them love me.

Have I said enough that Final Fantasy XII is taking over my life? hmmm…. My brother and I have our joint effort in the game, wherein I do the looting and money making and he continues on with the game after I get enough money to buy all our weapons and armour. We’ve already got like 50+ hours into the game to my mother’s despair. I play for an hour or so after I get home from work and then wake up and try to cram in all 20 minutes worth of looting before heading off to uni/work.

My sister got a job in England! She starts in February. I’m going to miss her a lot. Despite our relationship being based merely on the fact we are siblings, I’m going to miss her presumptuous demands when she won’t come home on Sunday anymore. This is a great opportunity for her, but I’m hoping she’ll move back home for a month or two before she leaves. Sadly, my father will be on his holiday to Vietnam for a month just before she goes. On the plus side (though I’d be able to live without) is I’m getting my sister’s car when she goes. Tim has some plans for it though =S.

AND I am costuming for a show. You must see it! Goto (yes I know gotos are evil) www.nuts.org.au and look out for a show called Last Post. It’s a terrific show and you should all see it. I’m in a bit a trouble because I won’t have a weekend due to sewing and I haven’t had time this week and my budget is pitifully small, so small that all my costume ambitions will be unable to be fulfilled. =(

Keep smiling!

Sorry I haven’t blogged about it for quite a while, I didn’t really feel like it and I had a lot on with TNTT and I’ve also been really sick. I’ll try to be more faithful in the next coming weeks (especially with exams on yay procrastination).

Camp was tiring with 5 hours sleep over the entire weekend. It was my first time round following a group of kids that were mine. It was great to see how other teachers from other schools taught as well and how my kids reacted to a non-school environment. I was a bit dissappointed with a few of my kids being reluctant to participate in any activities put to them and being overtly competitive to the point of alienating kids from other schools. Overall in the tests, they performed very well, just I was concerned with their behaviour.

We did expect them to do well because Liz and I kind of have a philosophy of working hard and studying for knowledge’s sake. We taught what we knew would be in it, and they didn’t dissappoint. I kind of picked the kids to represent our school an hour or two before the event on the day – that’s how unconcerned I was about the competition. But it was weird for me seeing my kids so competitive considering we don’t foster that attitude. 

I went to Lua Thieng, a Sydney-wide TNTT teachers meeting and our age group coordinator didn’t even turn up! That was a massive dissappointment. I’ve hardly heard from our coordinator at all this year and we were frantic during the camp just before the competition because she only turned up a scant half an hour before it was due to start. But we had Anh Khiem and Cao Nguyen and I being the most outspoken started complaining about everything.

I started reading this series by Sophie Kinsella and the first book is called The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic it’s about a girl named Becky Bloomwood and the escapades that happen to her and her delusions about financial management and spending to excesses. I can completely empathise being a horrible spender. But shopping (like for Becky) makes me feel good. I like picking and choosing. I’ve recently picked up the John Hughes classics DVD box set with The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles and Weird Science. Also my random stopovers into second hand stores (yay for more cheap skirts) and I also recently bought this Sheridan Junior quilt cover I’ve been eyeing for over a year cheap at DFO when I went with Jeremy and Nancy. This is not including accessories I’ve bought like these collapsible earmuffs, assorted hairclips, CDs and books. And today I bought a boob tube top! Yay for summer and skimpy clothing.

Recently I’ve been totally obsessed with Final Fantasy XII. It’s such an awesome game. I’ve been looting and buying weapons and armor to my hearts content. It’s by fair the best FF yet that I’ve played. It’s abilities system is substantially less annoying then FFX-2′s dresspheres and job class system in tactics and a lot more flexible than FFVII’s materia. The story is more medieval and more engaging than the most recent FF’s. They’ve made the enemy encounters more realistic with each area exploration and you can see the enemies coming and you can flee! I’m still fairly crap at Active and so I leave on Wait for the turn based system. It is semi-annoying that you have to progress further in the game to get higher level magicks as opposed to simply levelling up your materia or drawing it from enemies as all the magicks and technicks are sold from shops.

Anyway, enough prattling for now.

With love,

Cecile