Winter 2006

Winter this year arrived early. According to Millie, the actual start of Winter should be on the 1st of June; yet into the 3rd week of May, temperatures were already dropping to the lowest of 8 degrees at night. Damn shiok!!! I love it!!! I'm so glad that we're having a normal (normal so far) winter this year since it's my last year here. My quilt is all ready and I have resolved not to use the heater at all. My hands are already so dry that they have cracked in different places. Using lotion everyday doesn't seem to help. Maybe I should spread some butter on them since my body butter is not helping. It's also due to the ethanol we use constantly at the lab. That thing is super drying since it evaporates and takes the moisture away. It doesn't help that we have to wash our hands every time we want to leave the lab. So that results in about 5-10 hand-washings in the lab alone.

We just went to see 2 houses today. One is a townhouse on the way to Toowong, near the BP petrol station. This one was pretty nice. The previous tenants had converted the garage into a game room with a table-tennis table inside so there was like a lot of extra space. But the design of the place was weird. The first two rooms were downstairs with the garage while the kitchen, living room and master room were upstairs. I was worried about the safety of the rooms since anyone could climb over the fence and come into the rooms easily. Noise was another issue as the place was right beside the main road heading towards Toowong. The kitchen was rather small as well but I kind of liked the concept of having the living room upstairs. It was interesting. We told the agent that we would discuss and get back to him next week.

It was still early for the next house viewing so we walked to Toowong to buy some groceries. Mantou met us there and then we headed to Hawken Drive for lunch. Unfortunately, the Viet-Chinese place didn't open till 12.30 pm and we were there at 11.30 am. At first we thought it would open at 12 pm so we hung around and waited and waited and waited. Finally I was sick of waiting so I called the shop's number and we could literally hear the phone ringing from outside. It was obvious that no one was going to pick it up so we went home to keep the groceries. We also watched the videos from Wednesday night. OMG it was damn hilarious!!! We laughed and laughed and laughed till we cried and my stomach hurt. This is something I will remember for life...especially the part about Millie Tan...

We went down to view the second place since the appointment was due and Steph did say that she didn't have a very good feeling about it. I must admit that when we got there, it wasn't too impressive. After all it was this tall building which looked rather run-down from the outside. The intercom and buzzer were also out-of-order. We met the agent and she brought us to the lift to go up to the 6th floor, Unit 11. Ugh the lift was so small and cramped. I think I would rather climb the stairs. So we entered the unit and my first thought was, "Wow, this place looks quite posh". The furniture was not what you would expect for students to have. They had a nice glass dining table and black sofas with a tv and stereo. I was looking at the wine glass and china collection and thinking that they seemed so out-of-place for students like us. Then I looked into the kitchen and it was beautiful! So spacious that 4 people could cook in there at the same time. There were quite a few cupboards and even one that looked like a larder complete with lots of containers and trays to put stuff. The fridge was the kind with the freezer and chiller side by side and was definitely larger than the previous house's. It was even bigger than my current fridge. There was a great view of the river from the balcony. The rooms were nice. I really liked the blue room with a single bed and an L-shaped office desk in the corner. Then again, I probably was attracted to it because of the colour, heh heh. The other 2 rooms had double beds but no study tables. Other than that, everything was almost perfect. We stood out on the balcony and talked for a while. The girls were already in love with the place and I liked it too. So we told the agent on the spot that we wanted it. She said no problem and since we had already passed her our application forms, she told us that she would go in on Monday and process them. We would get confirmation by Tuesday. Now we were all happy like monkeys and chatting merrily as we walked down the stairs. Then Mantou mentioned that she hoped the agent wouldn't give the place to other people who might be willing to pay more than $450 per week. Alamak....we didn't think of that. This had happened to Mantou last year and now all we had was a verbal agreement. Damn!!! Now want to be happy also cannot. Now I can't have a peaceful weekend because I will be worrying about the place....zzzzzzzzzzz.......