Kia Ore!

Kia Ore!

Wow..my first blog. If not for this exchange to New Zealand, I probably would never start one. This is for the benefit of my dear friends and of course, my poor memory. Hopefully, I'll be disciplined enough to keep it as updated as possible. Hehe..

Today marks the 2nd week here in Auckland. So far, it has been pretty good, except for the 1st few days when I was deprieved of internet connection. It's really cold here, a drastic change of temperature from Singapore. I suspect temperatures are below 10 degrees. Brrr.... But, I just bought a heater today!! It works really well and I'm warm and happy now. Yay!! It was so unbearble without a heater. Further, my room has no sun coming in from the window because it faces the corridor outside my apartment.

There are 8 of us exchange students here from Singapore, one from NTU and the rest from NUS. They are Yee Fang, Tze Chia, Chiao Chia, (a pair of twins! how lucky are they man...I wish my sister was my twin), Jiayu, Daryl, Chee Chuan and Wendy. I'm so glad to have their company. They are the reason why I don't feel homesick which I'm really prone to.

I'm sharing an apartment with 3 other Singaporeans also on exchange. They are Jiayu (Architecture student), Daryl (Arts student) and Chee Chuan (SOC). My apartment leaves much to be desired. It is a really small apartment. My room is puny! It is less than 3/4 the size of my KR hall room. Also, there's only 1 toilet that we all have to share which makes it pretty inconvenient when we have the same lesson times. The location of the apartment is just alright for me. We're staying along Hobson Street which means that we are within Auckland City, in the midst of the action. My address is Unit 2K, Stanford Apartments, 189 Hobson Street, Auckland City, 1010. (ooo i can remember it so well now) However, my place is pretty far from law school. Law school is like at the extreme end of the university (isolated from other faculties once again. boo..) and it takes me about 1/2 hr to walk to school. I don't really mind the walking though because seriously, I need all the exercise I can get. The winter makes one especially hungry and sad to say, I've been snacking and eating a lot more. =( Oh, a perk abt the apartment is that there is a gym!! (which I will have to frequent soon. Hehe..)

School is going alright. I've been really slack though. I've got so many other things to settle and do that I have no time and interest to touch school work. The teaching style is pretty much the same as in Singapore. This semester, I'm taking commercial arbitration, commercial law, insurance, legal ethics and critical thinking (a philosophy paper). Sound pretty boring huh? Well, they aren't exactly the modules that I am interested in but they are the best choices that I had. Unfortunately, the more interesting modules (or papers as they call it here) are offered only in semester 1.

Ok, now for a quick summary of what I did over the last 2 wks. Attempted cooking many times and they were mostly successful. I'm still a 'junior chef' though cos I do mainly the preparation work which involves washing and chopping. Joined most of the orientation programmes like pub night (yeefang got drunk here), ethnic night whereby all the international students cook dishes that represent their home country and have sth like a pot luck dinner, wine tasting (where yeefang got drunk again.) and tried NZ's fish and chips. Will be going for DV8, the biggest Asian party this coming sat. (let's hope that the trend of yeefang getting drunk does not continue. This time we have to stop her from getting near alcohol!)

On our own, we have been going for wkend trips. Our first one was to Waiheke Island. Took a 35min ferry ride and from there, we explored the island by foot and by bus. At the wkend market, I saw these very pretty wine glasses that were only selling for $2 each but I was worried abt how I'd transport them back so I wanted to consider before buying them. After I came back to the stall 5mins later, having decided to buy them, they all got bought away!! All 5 of them!! I was so disappointed and the stall owner said to me, "she who hesistates loses it". Talk about rubbing it in man..

At the vineyard where tried gourmet cheese!

Last wkend, we went to Devon Port which is just a 12mins ferry ride from Auckland. Over there, we managed to see a great view of Auckland City and Rangitoto, a volcano. We will be going to Rangitoto too, probably in spring when the flowers bloom! Devon Port is a really nice town with quite a number of nice shops and cafes.

Chao Chia and Me. Great view of the Skytower at the back!

If u stare real hard, u'll be able to see many poles at the back. They're the hundreds of sails of the yachts in Auckland. The City of Sails is certainly not a misnomer.

Cool pic huh? And the amazing thing is that Kat also has a similar picture taken like that. Talk about coincidence!

On Sun, we from Stanford Apartments went to watch a movie from the films festival here. It's called Drawing Restrain and I must say, it is one of the weirdest films that I have ever watched. It was boring because there was hardly any dialogue throughout the film. Everything was just left up to your own interpretation. All of us dozed off at one point or another during the film. Movie tics here are really expensive, $14 per ticket. Anyway, that movie is going to be my last from the films festival. I'm not going to waste money watching things that I don't enjoy. I've had enough of all these movies from films festivals. Just before coming to Auckland, I watched quite a number which Jie Jie borrowed from her friend and man...they were very unsatisfying.

Today, we were invited by Helena, a lady we met from iSpace (a hang out place for international students) to go to the Holy Place. It's actually like a temple or maybe it'll more aptly be described as a buddhist centre. The meeting place for these devotees is a house which they are using as a temporary place of worship while their official building is being completed. We went there to celebrate qi yue chu yi. The rituals that they performed are very different from any I have seen. Felt like some primary school kid today because everytime a speaker came up to speak, we had to say sth like "tu shi fu hao" and bow. Then, when they were done with their speech, we had to say "xie xie tu shi fu" and bow. However, the people there are very nice. They actually sent us home after the ceremony ended and also, they treated us to a vegetarian dinner. I have a feeling that Helena is trying to preach buddhism to us. I hope she will not be too pushy.