hello world

i have not blogged in ages! well not on this blog anyway. i blogged a little bit on my other blog, but that's just random thoughts i have or images i like. not really about my life.

it's been a while. my first year of university has ended, which is strange. it's gone very quickly and makes me wonder if the rest of the 3 years i have there will go as quickly.

i'm a little bit worried about my marks. i've been doing ok, but not consistently so. i have to get a distinction average for my 4 psych subjects next year. that scares me quite a lot, i've been finding it hard to get even a credit for psych. it's very different to anything i've done and i'm only now starting to learn how to approach it properly. hopefully i can do some learning over the four month break as well. it would be a shock to the system to get right into statistics if i didn't do anything for four months.

i have many small holiday plans.
first of all i'm going to the southern highlands with mum straight after my exams finish (literally), for 2 nights. we're staying in a little boutique hotel in the country that only has seven rooms.
after that i think my dad is coming back and we'll have christmas, and sometime during that period i'm going down to melbourne for a few days to see an old friend, who grew up with me in hk but now lives in germany. he is visiting family with his mum in melbourne, so we thought we'd go visit them too since they are over our side of the world.
i want to have a new years eve party. we'll see how that goes.
the first week of january i'm going on summerfest, an urban mission on the central coast. we team up with central coast evangelical church and run a week long program for kids. i'm in the team leading year 7-9 kids, should be fun. i've never done anything like this before.
after that i'm heading to hk and maybe thailand for 2-3 weeks. my friend from chinese at uni, rachel, will be coming with me which i am very excited about. mum will also be there for a while and with the exchange rate, i am told, being at nearly AU$1=HK$7 the shopping will be greaaaat. then i'm going to koh tao for a few days, blaise is working there for a month and asked me to visit. apparently it's mega cheap too.

i have also applied for a summer casual job at the opera house. i would be a tour guide, showing people around the opera house as well as doing some admin work. i haven't heard back from them, but i hope it goes well.

-ln

i am travelling again

tomorrow i'm going to hk. ok, it's only for 4 days, but it still counts. note, i say travelling and not holidaying, because that's not what i'm doing.
mum is having her book launch - it's going to be so cool to see her book on the bookshelf and be able to walk into a bookstore and go, my mum wrote that. the powerpoint should be good too, it's all very exciting. but the other reason for going is because my grandma is sick, that's not so nice. they thought she had tuberculosis, but i don't think it's that. but still, mum says i should see her because she might not last so long anymore...

so i'm preparing for a massive 4 days in hk. as hk trips always turn out to be, it'll be intense and jam-packed with a billion things to do. dad will also be there - also nice.

today i also booked all my flights for june/july. it's so exciting, and i'll be paying for some of it myself which I feel proud of. but it's going to be a wonderful trip, whatever happens. i'm so excited, i love having things like this to look forward to. and to see all my wonderful friends over there!

update about hk later.

-ln

the night i met keane

i've never really met anyone famous before, well excluding jimmy barnes maybe, but his daughter was in my year and i don't think he knows who i am anyway.

saturday night hannah and i went to see keane. it was at the metro theatre in the city. the show wasn't sold out which was really a plus - we arrived an hour after the doors opened but it wasn't crowded, and we got within 1 person of the barrier. the metro is actually quite a cool venue too, covered in posters of previous gigs, you can sit up the top and it's sort of tiered like in a normal concert hall except all standing. we'd missed the supporting band (the ivy i think they were called) and only had to wait about half an hour for keane to come on.

it was really such a great concert. han and i are both fans but didn't quite expect it to be so good. frontman tom did a really good job to communicate with the crowd, and came up really close to us. and contrary to other concerts, there was no pushing and getting squashed when tom came close to us, everyone just stood and enjoyed the music. i guess that might've had something to do with the crowd - it can't really be described as a young crowd, most were around mid 20s to 30s i guess. even some older couples.

the night before i was waiting outside the metro to give the tickets we'd originally bought to a friend, and there was a boy from florida waiting to sell 3 tickets. he ended up selling them to a couple who were around 40...we chatted a bit - turns out he sings at hillsong and came to sydney to take some lessons in jazz piano and guitar at the conservatorium. i love meeting random interesting people.

keane promised us that this (the 2nd and last show) would be heaps better than the first one and it definitely was the case. they played their hearts out, coming out for 2 encores even though they were completely knackered and finishing with queen's under pressure. it's difficult to describe the kind of elation you feel after a concert - i've been to so many and everytime it's a bit different. i guess this was just a kind of contentedness, being very pleased at what you just heard and paid seventy-odd dollars for. i guess it was also just the simplicity of keane's music - they don't try to do lots of fancy stuff but keep it to some beautiful melodies and words.

han and i stayed on after and i very politely asked one of the roadies for the setlist which i subsequently got! i've never gotten a setlist before so it's pretty exciting, even if keane aren't my favourite band. we found it to be raining outside so to protect the setlist i stuck it to myself under my cardigan. there were some people gathered outside waiting for keane to come out and we decided we'd follow along and see if they'd sign my setlist. after waiting in the cold and rain for a bit they finally came out, all 4 of them signed my setlist and tom even added under pressure at the end. and jesse, the bassist who isn't actually part of the band, asked me if i was from america because of my accent. they're were nice boys, down to earth, and i got a photo with tom and his rosy british cheeks.

i guess it's bands like these that you CAN meet because they're not all hyped up. i'd never have a chance to meet muse or someone like that, i'd be wayyy overexcited if i met them too, but meeting keane was just like meeting normal people, except they'd been standing on stage an hour before...

-ln

happy easter

happy easter everyone!
i like spending my easters quietly at home. mum and i read the bible together about jesus' death and i shared what i'd learnt from public meeting with her. we're going to watch passion of the christ too, which i've actually never seen and i guess easter is the appropriate time. apart from that i've done some exercise this morning and played some piano and singing practise for choir (having not been to a rehearsal for 3 weeks...), and maybe some catching up on work now.
that's it for now.

-ln

much has been a-happening

i am currently writing chinese characters in a little charater-writing book i bought in china. yes, back to that! practise practise practise.

i have become busy. my week looks like this -
mondays i start uni at 10 with a chinese lecture, though the chinese lectures and tutes are much the same really. i enjoy my 4 hour break on mondays too, gives me time to do some decent work and/or hang out with friends. last monday my friend liv and i went to her college and sat at the piano in the common room singing, it was great. i then have my music tute at 4 which i enjoy greatly. some really nice and interesting people there.
tuesday i also start at 10 but with a psychology lecture. at the moment this is the neuroscience lecture which is also interesting, having not done any since in about 3 years. tuesdays i usually have lunch with my friend jaime and our luncheons are spent complaining about how much work we have and how tired we are (tuesdays are the worst days for both of us). at night i go to switch at church, bible study :)
wednesdays are piano lesson mornings. this is usually preceeded by being worried because i've only practise once in the past week, and sometimes leads me to wake up extra early to do some practise. or, as is also sometimes the case, i wake up to finish my asian studies tute work due that day (i always leave my readings too late). i try to go to the EU public meetings on wednesdays, but it also happens to be the only time where mik, hannah, lucy and i all have a break at the same time. we had lunch this wednesday, first time probably since berlin last year that we've been together, just us four. it was great :) i finish at 3 on wednesdays and usually go home before coming back for choir at 7. intense 2 hour rehearsals really leave me breathless! but they are great fun too.
thursdays begin at 10 once more with another psych lecture, this time social psychology. today i spelt in though, missed it. bad ellen. my EU small group meets on thursdays too.
fridays are a bludge - 1 hour psych lecture to be attended at either 10, 1 or 3. sometimes i go at 10, sometimes at 1. that's the day to catch up on work/social life.
saturday SHOULD be my uni work day, but isn't. bad.
sundays is working at coaching centre in chatswood for chinese nerds (yesss alliteration) from 9-5, followed by church.

and that is my life until june 23.

-ln

an insight into uni life

today is friday and i had 1 lecture - my 1pm psychology lecture. i came late and took a seat on the side near the front, because strangely enough there are always free seats near the front even in a packed lecture. the lecturer bashed religion, homeopathy, acupuncture and japanese ki energy, while saying that science is the only thing that is reliable in this world. pretty average science lecture, really.

i then made my way to sit outside fisher library (the main big library and biggest one in the southern hemisphere i think?) to wait for a friend. might i just point out - fisher library=best place to be targeted by religious fanatics. oh, and the socialists usually have a stand set up outside too. so i sat there and there was a lady sitting next to me, who i didn't really notice. until she got up and said 'it's a really hot day but the steps are kind of cold still!' (we were sitting on stone steps) and I kind of smiled and agreed and then she proceeded to ask me what i studied etc, and me, i'm sitting there thinking she just wants to have some friendly conversation while also waiting for someone at the library. she asked me about my background a bit and then...then came that question: 'so how does your family work religiously then, having both german and chinese sides?' there. it suddenly sunk in - she was getting at this point all along. so i quickly said that dad wasn't religious but mum and i are christians, and oh, what a coincidence! she's a christian too. and then her friend came and she had to go but she wanted my number because she was interested to hear more about my story and i couldn't exactly say no as that would seem really rude, both being christians and all...so i got sucked in and now i am scared she'll call.

after this i continued sitting and waiting, and there as an asian beat-boxing to himself while listening to his ipod behind me. it was pretty good beat-boxing, but not something you want to hear while sitting outside the library.

and then a pirate came out of the library. he was wearing a bright orange headscarf, had rugged facial hair, numerous necklaces and ripped shorts with boots, and was carrying a brightly coloured sack.

-ln

neuroscience

today was my first neuroscience lecture for psychology. i think it's the first of 9 or so lectures. we were taught about the nervous system and how there's 2 major divisions: the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system. the peripheral nervous system is in turn divided into 3 parts; sensory nerves, motor nerves and autonomic nerves. as the name suggests, autonomic nerves are nerves that create non-voluntary bodily functions, like digestion. to put it simply, the lecturer (one justin harris, who seemed really quite boring and uninteresting up to this moment) said that what the autonomic nerves do can be described in the 4 F's: "feeding, fight, flight, and a fourth one that has to do with sexual activity"
hehehe.

-ln