Last Day of the Year

Thirty first of December. Last day of 2010 people. Who’s going to see the fireworks? I know I’m not, but I went last year. Fireworks looks epic anywhere, but it only feels right when you watch it with lots and lots of other people, with everyone going “oooh” and “ahhhh” and “wow”. I don’t have Australian TV antennas installed, so I can’t even stay up late to watch it on TV.  It’s a shame, I watched the midnight fireworks on TV a few years ago. I was curled up on the sofa with the volume turned down low and everyone else in the house sleeping, and it was actually pretty fun.

Windows XP Candy Cane Screensaver

This is a few days late for Christmas, but I just remembered a Windows XP has an Easter Egg that lets you turn your 3D pipes screensaver into candy cane pipes. I think it's pretty cool, and it's real easy to do, so here's the steps:

1. Right click on your desktop and go into properties.
2. Click the Screen Saver tab and in the drop down box, select 3D Pipes.
3. Click settings.
4. Under Surface Style, select Textured.
5. Click the Choose Texture button, when the window pops up, click Cancel.
6. Click Okay on the Screen Saver setup.
7. And your screen saver should now be candy cane 3D pipes! :)

Note that this easter egg only work in Windows XP.

Now for something completely different. I saw my neighbour's 2 month old baby daughter today and I'm spazzing out at how cute she is! Her name is Nina (or Lina, the mother has a little bit of an accent) and she is adorable. Her mum says she likes me because she smiled at me. Nina is so little and her skin is so nice.

Rain

It's raining. The sounds come in clearly through the window: the faint, even pita-pata of raindrops on pavement; the quiet low rumble of faraway thunder, reassuring rather than frightening; the rustling of the trees bending and shuffling in the wind; the occasional sound of cars driving past my window, tires flicking up water and making a "shaaaaaa" sound on the wet ground.

Once in a while the cool breeze sents the wet, clean smell of rain into the room. The cool tendrils of air caress my hands, or feet, or face, and disperse into nothing, leaving only the impression of a slight chill on my skin. The world is cleansed by the rain, and the memories of heavy, sweltering days are washed away. The air seems lighter, as if a cool hand had lifted a smothering veil of warm air.

No one strays outside, no sound of frolicking children down the street, all evidence of human presence is diminished. The clattering of mahjong next door that was heard several nights in a row is missing, insects that screamed in the heat are silent, even the streetlights seem dimmed and the lights from houses across the streets are absent all together.

The sky darkens into night, the rain peters off. But for the the steady dripping of water from the roof, all is quiet.

My English tutor says my writing is lacking in descriptions, has too many long sentences and too many commas. I'm trying to work the description bit first. And because I love rain, of course.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Merry Christmas everybody. I went to Sydney Aquatic Centre at Sydney Olympic Centre yesterday. Mum's birthday is today, but she has to work today. Even though western shops close, her working place is Chinese. I had lots of fun there. The water's all heated to various degrees, with the spas being the warmest. There were water slides and sauna and other fun facilities. And the showers are hot. I suppose the Sydney Olympic Park swimming centre would have warm showers, but it's just so unusual.

Afterwards we went out to eat again, lots of hot (in the chili way) sheep stuff again. Yummy food!

I gave mum the necklace I bought her for her birthday today, since, you know, it's her birthday. She liked it and put it on immediately, but promptly broke it an hour later by fiddling with it. *sigh* It's the thought that counts?

Okay, Merry Christmas again even though it's a bit late in the day (I found out in the morning that I still had math tutor homework left undone, and I thought I did them all T_T)

Been away for a few days

Sorry the blog was a bit wonky for a few days, I just changed the skin really really late at night but didn't adjust everything else. I thought I'd fix it the next day but I didn't, so it was left like that for a few days. But everything's okay now, I think. The cbox is moved to the other side, so it shouldn't be cramped any more. I quite like this skin, so I think I sticking with this one for more than a week.

On an entirely unrelated note, I got myself a tumblr, it's at http://m-mellow.tumblr.com/ Nothing much is on there yet, but check it out if you want.

So I was busy. On Monday I went with a friend (20 something years old) to work at her jewelry stand job. I went to get "experience", so I didn't get any money for it. Mum and grandma were so happy with that. The stand was in St Claire Shopping centre, and we had to take the train to to Mt Druit (sp?), and that's several stations down from Blacktown (don't remember where we changed trains) And then take the bus to St Claire.

That place was really isolated and there weren't a lot of people, so business was astoundingly bad. Two and a half hours after opening the stand, we made $20... O_o That's two people, and $20 in the course of two and a half hours. My friend said that it's usually a lot busier in other places. But here, I just sat for several hours, played games on my laptop, listened to my ipod. If I actually was working there, I would have spent about half as much as I would have earnt in wages on food I bought there. I also found that I have some skills at organising and arranging jewelry. (Okay, just a little)

It got busier by 4-5 pm, and at the end of the day we made a little more than $200. According to my friend, she usually makes three times as much. I also bought a necklace for my mother as birthday present, which, by the way, is on Christmas day! She's the perfect present for grandma and grandpa, except that we don't celebrate Christmas, especially not back in the days she was born in.

There's no photo, because my photo taking skills fail at close range (shaky hands) but I'll do my best to describe it. The pendant a is teardrop shaped turquoise stone, set in a (fake) diamond teardrop shaped frame. Okay, that was a really bad description. There's a teardrop shaped turquoise, with fake diamonds surrounding it... (that was also bad, meh)

But it's a surprise, so I'm hoping my mum will like it.

Afterwards, the girl working at the other jewelry stand there gave me a MyMulti ticket that's still valid for a day. The result of which is a trip to the city the next night.

I have some decent photos, but none are as good as I would like it to be. I asked my mum if I could get a new camera, and she said yes! With what I know of her though, I won't expect it too soon.

The post about the city is below, it would be really long if I combined them, and I don't like that. So read the post below. It's more interesting than this one.

City Trip (and photos)

First went to Queen Victoria's building and had an ice cream, one for mum and one for me. (She's like a little kid, so childish :D). Then we walked to Darling Harbour and it's always been one of my favourite place. It's a place that makes me very carefree, no matter when I go there.

The sight of the rippling waves, the unique smell of the sea brought by the sea breezes; the feel of the ocean always calms me down. It's as if my mind follows the gently rippling lights or blue, red and yellow on the water, and everything else just gets washed away, insignificant. It's an interesting contrast, walking along the Darling Harbour. On one side of me is the ocean, the calm nature, dark, quiet, subdue. On the other is the loud hustle and bustle of the seaside restaurants, so busy and so human. The two opposites are both fascinating when experienced on their own, but combined, they form a scene equally entrancing.

After some time spent at Darling Harbour, we went to Chinatown to get something to eat. We eventually found a really good Chinese noodle restaurant that also sold my favourite dish: sheep kebab! (don't know if that's what it's actually called). It was soooo yummy. It had chili and cumin and other spices on it that made it taste so good. My mouth is watering just from thinking about it. The noodles were great too, had a bit of chili oil on it, yummy.

The Present

We stand at the sole meeting point of two diverging eternities, the past and the future. Before this instant is the unchangeable past, set in something stronger than stone and untouchable beyond the barrier of time. After this instant is the uncertain future, fickle and fragile like crepe paper butterflies. The only time we can act in is the moment of here and now.

Where did this come from? Constructive criticism?

Poor doggie...

Well, I said I was going to change skins very frequently, so what do you think of the new one? Better? Worse? No difference?

This morning, someone left a dog in front of my neighbour's house. It was left in a cardboard box, and when they let it out it was shaking like a leaf. It can't seem to put any weight on its right hindleg, so my neighbours say maybe that's why it was thrown out. It was a really cute puppy too, I really wish I could have taken it in, but mum and grandma are deathly scared of dogs, even really really small ones.

My neighbour said that her husband saw a car circling on our avenue before, and those are probably the people that threw it out. If they don't want it, they should sent it to an animal shelter (my neighbour said that costs $50, is that why they didn't do it? It's no excuse) *sigh* Poor thing... What if it died out there? I can't believe people would do something like that.

Japan Trip 2: Tokyo Tower

Second day


It's was raining that day, but not very hard, so it was really pretty comfortable and cool. Unlike me, a lot of people seemed to not have their umbrellas, so many bought umbrellas from the convenience store. And the only style they have is the long transparent one. I know that some people are pretty interested in the transparent umbrellas, so here's what it looks like to see through them.

Through a transparent umbrella

Streets of Japan

Changing Blogskins

铃兰

I changed my blogskin! Tell me what you think. Just as a heads up, I'll probably be changing blogskins very frequently until I settle on one I really like, so don't be surprised if it does change, and please give me your opinion. I'll try to improve on any imperfections you point out.

I'm also trying out the gadgets, so tell me what you think of them too. For now, feed the fishies! It doesn't actually do anything except look nice, so they don't grow or die or anything like that. But they do follow your mouse around, and you click the gadget background to feed them fish food. That's all folks, Xiao signing out at twenty minutes past midnight.

Japan Trip 1: Arriving in Tokyo, Japan

Would you believe me if I said I've never really looked at my Japan Trips photos since I got back? Once we got back it was studying studying straight away, for yearlies and trial and then the school certificate.


But, now that I have some free time now, I'll be sorting through the 2065 pictures I've taken in Japan and putting some of them up here for you guys to see, along with a recount of the trip. It's going to be way too long if I put them all into one post, so I'll split them up into parts and be very selective in which photos I put up. It takes forever to get pictures on to the blog, and 2065 photos is a lot to get through, even if I'm just looking through them, so please be patient with me, I'll try my best to finish this project someday.


Here goes:



Airport

 


Formal Photos

I come bearing formal photos. My camera is very bad so most of the photos are so blurred that I won't put them up. If you want anything better you'd have to ask Cinda or Cindy. Or alternatively, go to Mitchell's blog at http://www.geekasaurusrawr.blogspot.com/, it's the December 11 2010 post (thanks goes to Helena for discovering this). Both his camera and his camera skills are miles ahead of mine.

Clicky on the read more link to see all the photos.

'Talk' About Getting a Part-time Job

Mum and grandma had a Talk (with a capital T) with me after dinner. They want me to get a part-time job, not for the money, but for the work experience. They especially want me to go work for McDonald's. I don’t really mind doing part-time jobs, but how do I go about getting a job?

This work experience thing is something that’s come up time and time again. They really want me to have work experience because employers don’t want workers that don’t have any prior work experience. I know that I’m really not in a very good position, I don’t have any good points other than a good academic result. I don’t have work experience, I don’t do sport, I don’t have any volunteering experience, I basically don’t do anything extra-curricular. And that’s very very bad. Even universities give priority to students with good ‘leadership qualities’ and stuff. SO, now I’m looking at myself and sort of despairing a little bit.

Aside from not knowing how to get a job, I’m pretty shy, I think. I used to be scared of talking to strangers at all, but now I’ve improved and am only scared of asking strangers for anything I don’t think I can rightly expect from them. Like, for example, asking them for a job.

Do any of you work part-time jobs? What do you suggest?

Year 10 Formal

The formal was very fun. I wore a plain black dress and black coat and silver flats with a bead pompom, not too eye catching but good enough. A few people said I looked cute in it, but I think they were just being nice.

There was a bit of a rough spot at the beginning. Clare told me to go with her on the same train. So she called me and said “oh take this train that stops at Padstow”. I was a bit skeptical, because when I checked the train schedule before there was no such train. But she assured me that it did stop at Padstow, and I was going to check it again but didn’t have enough time. So, I got to Padstow and watched the train I was planning to take before go by, and then found out the train that Clare said stops at Padstow, doesn’t. Mum drove me to school, and I missed the photographing time because she wasn’t real good at going places she isn’t familiar with.

After that though, everything was great.

The formal place was upstairs, and almost every girl beside Cinda and myself were wearing high heels, so I was a bit worried for them getting up the stairs. Once we got up to our room it was photo time again. It was pretty funny because everyone was in really nice formal clothing and it felt a lot like a business/celebrity dinner/banquet and all the high class people are ‘mingling’.

Most of the dresses were so beautiful I felt a little ashamed of my own plain black dress, Anna’s one was so cute.

The food was alright, I had a chicken roll thingy (it’s like piece of chicken wrapped around a bit of cheese) for entrée, beef for main course and raspberry gelato for desert. But at the beginning there was a piece of bread so hard it was like a brick. It took so much effort to cut it. There was also a chocolate cake that the best dressed boy and girl got to make the first cut of, but everyone was too busy dancing to eat it at the end.

You remember how we had a survey we were supposed to fill out? (I didn’t do it). The formal committee people painted sashes to give out to them (like the sashes Miss Universe gets). The MCs (Troy and the Daniel) actually wrote jokes for it, so it was pretty funny. I don’t remember all of them, but here goes:

School Certificate Results

School Certificate results were received on the 9^th of December 2010. (Why did it take me so long to write about it?!) All band 6 except for Geography (5 marks away from band 6 L), highly competent (98%) for Computer Skills and all straight A's for course results. I’m more than satisfied with my results. I know that some people say that it doesn’t mean anything, and it probably isn’t all that important (my math tutor tells me I can now use it as toilet paper), I still wouldn’t want to do badly in any test.

And School Certificate is now officially done and dusted. Since we’re going on to year 11 and 12, SC doesn’t mean very much. And once we get into university no one will look at our HSC, by then it’s the university scores that matter.

Year 11 will be a large leap forward from year 10; faster progress, harder work. I hope I manage to get through it alright. I really wish I could have made that adjustment with the support of you guys. I’ll really miss you all (expect to see that phrase quite a bit).

After the ceremony, there was afternoon tea under the cola of fruit and finger foods, but I didn’t really like the food. It was my last day and so I was sort of milling around outside the crowd wanting to say goodbye to people. I guess I was shy, so I didn’t actually get to say good bye to many people. I’m sorry. L I’ll miss you all a lot.

First Post of My First Blog

So I've jumped onto the bandwagon and joined the blogging trend. Here I am with my first ever post on my first ever blog which, as it happens, is also the first thing I've posted onto the internet. Round of applause please, my first step into the big scary world of blogging needs to be celebrated.

Wish me luck, and hope I might actually continue adding to this (it would help if you keeping reminding me to do it). I might also customize the appearance of the blog a bit when I find the time to work out how everything works. But I'm not a very techno-savvy person, so it might take some doing. Those blogging veterans with really nice blogs already, I would be really happy if I could get some pointers from you guys (I'm looking at you Helena, Cinda and Maryanne).