Wen: I have a Deutscher sticker

This one is for Mr. Zaidi. I have a Deutscher sticker on my closet (probably from Dane because he likes soccer). It says Fussball-Bund... I don't know what the "Bund" means.

Wen: Sunset in the Land Down Under

Australia is really a beautiful country.

I took these pictures when I was walking home from the bus stop. It was a warm but breezy night with misquitoes in the air. One of the little buggers bit me and now I have a misquito bite on my heel... yeah.

Anyway, enjoy the palm trees... we definitely don't have those in Connecticut!

Wen: Whhhat... Butter Chicken?

Yum... Butter Chicken from a jar! Yeah, sounds delicious to me too.

I got some Butter Chicken sauce from Aldi and decided to mix in some zucchini, tomatoes, mushrooms and of course chicken. Some black pepper and some red pepper for taste. It actually came out pretty decently! :)

I'm sure it tastes nothing like Indian food, but wow, it was so easy! Plus... the rest is gonna be lunch for tomorrow!

Wen: I G-Chat with my dad

I was G-Chatting it up with my dad today, talking about getting a car for dental school. 

[Warning:The below conversation may contain foul language.  For mature audiences only.  Viewer discretion is advised.]


爸爸: you still need a cae

  car

 me: yeah... i thought i was gonna get mom's car

  or the van

10:16 AM 爸爸: dental student drive a van like a soccer mommy

 me: well whatever

  i just need a car

10:17 AM 爸爸: I already spread the words I am interesed in buying a used car.

 me: ohh

 爸爸: If I can not find one, you may just drive mommy current car.

10:18 AM mommy is pudshing me to buy a new car for you.

 me: wtf, i don't need a new car

10:19 AM her car is fine

  i like it

 爸爸: what wtf means?

 me: what the fuck

 爸爸: that is bad phrase.

10:20 AM me: well people use it alot

 爸爸: I thought you are educated college student

 me: yeah soooo?

  it's instant messaging language

 爸爸: you nevdr use word like that

 me: it's like lol

  brb

  ttyl

  it's im language!

10:21 AM 爸爸: brb? ttyl?

 me: be right back

  talk to you later

 爸爸: no

  I can feel I am the old generation

 me: yep

Wen: Homemade Pizza

Tonight I made the most delicious pizza ever. [JK Amir, our pizzas were really delicious too.]

After chatting with Vikram online, and seeing his inspirational food creations, I decided to make my own pizza for dinner.

I use one of my many Lebanese breads (usually used for lunch wraps) and rubbed a little bit of olive oil on the surface. I grated some cheddar cheese and sprinkled a little on the bread. I sliced up half a tomato and one mushroom for veggies and ripped up a chicken drumstick for some delicious, delicious protein. After laying it all down, some minced garlic was lightly spread around and the rest of the cheese sprinkled ontop.

I put it into the oven on the fan bake option and left it in for about ten minutes until the edges looked like they were going to burn. When it came out, the aroma was quite pleasing, and the taste was delectable! It really didn't even need sauce. The edges and the bread were cripsy and fantastic.

This was incredibly healthy, easy and DELICIOUS! Who knew this was achieveable?! Anyway... the oven here has a "Bake" and "Fan Bake" option. I looked up the difference and I guess "Fan Bake" bakes more evenly by running hot air over the food. Very interesting!  Anyway, pretty good for making pizza on my own for the first time, mmm?  :)

Wen: Hilarious Chinese-American Comedian

This video is hilarious.  Joe Wong is a Chinese-American comedian who recently was an entertainer at the 66th Radio and Television Correspondents' Dinner.  I know this is purely for the abroad stuff, but since Jen hasn't been blogging, I figured we'd pad the blog a little.  <3

Wen: The Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art

I finally went to something "touristy" today--the Queensland Art Gallery and the Gallery of Modern Art.  This was for my Asian Visual Cultures class at UQ.

[[NOTE to Facebook viewers: There is a slide show attached, you might have to go to the actual blog]]

Very, very interesting stuff.  Ling joined me and we had a blast!  I spent the morning looking around for some souvenirs to bring back.  My friend Sean really wanted a boomerang, so I tried to find some reasonably priced ones that were actually MADE IN AUSTRALIA!  I did find a shop on Queen Street and the largest ones were only $6.50 each!  Baller... I'm gonna bring it back to the U.S., become proficient in boomerang hunting and hunt for small wildlife.  Or not.  I also found kangaroo jerky!  At first I thought that I wouldn't be allowed to bring that stuff back, BUT it seems that it's cool as long as it's sealed.  Fantastic news, I'm gonna bring it back for everyone to try.  :)  Btw, in the store, I also saw kangaroo feet key-chains and I thought that was really weird, but I guess people in the U.S. have rabbit feet for keychains... so WHY NOT!? They also had a kangaroo hide for sale.. it was a small one and was $99.  But omg, it was so soft!

Ling and I booked it to the art gallery just in time for my class's tour conducted by Professor Morris Low.  Really quite an educated guy.  There was some very cool stuff... like the porcelain socks, LOL.  I really liked the sticker thing, and the airplanes!!!  Making the airplanes was SO FUN!  I got to play with trash and junk and make it into a dragonfly airplane.  Brings me back to the childhood days <3  Quite an incredible day... I'm planning on visiting the Queensland Museum too!

Wen: Grilled and South Bank

Last Saturday I went to a restaurant called Grilled with Dane, and it is apparently one of the restaurants that people really should visit because the food is just so good!

Well, Dane had a 2 for 1 coupon and we each ordered "The Queenslander" with 100% lean beef, beets (called beetroot, here) and even an egg. It was huge!  Omg, one of these burgers can really feed two people, I can't even imagine how many calories one of these things is!  We also got fries with it and Schwepps sodas that were Blood Orange flavored!
The soda was delicious, and it was definitely the first time I had blood orange flavored soda.  Although, I think it just tasted like regular orange with some red food coloring.
Anyway, just the burger was $12!  So, in an effort to give my wallet and my waistline a rest!

We also walked around South Bank along the Brisbane River!  The picture of the boat on the river is actually huge and has a dance floor on it!  Dane's Semi-Formal was actually held on there.

I wish we had prom on there, that would have been so cool!

It was definitely awesome!  Next time, I want to go when the markets are open... they apparently have a street filled with small stores that sell various things under tarp tents.  Sounds fun!

Wen: Alice in Wonderland

A few nights ago, my friend Dane and I went to go see Alice in Wonderland in 3D. We went to the Indooroopilly Shopping Center Cinemas.

So, apparently it's also more expensive to watch movies in Australia than in the U.S. One ticket was 16 dollars WITH the student discount you can get if you show your UQ ID card.

The movie was okay, it wasn't that great and it wasn't horrible. Johnny Depp was good though, just as creepy as normal. :)

Jen: today

The internet access at Cite has not been working, so I have a bit of a back up of blog entries.  Right now it is the coffee break during the meeting for starting the international society for ethics education.  I am basically in a room with the leading ethicists across the world.  I know Wen is probably yawning while reading this, but for me this is really cool.  There is representation from Brazil, Ireland, Turkey, Netherlands, Qatar, Nairobi, Botswana, Singapore, Vietnam, and Mexico.  Everyone is very friendly, too.  They don’t treat me as the intern in the corner of the room who doesn’t matter, they have actually included me a bit in the dialogue.  SO COOL.

Jen: yesterday

So I decided to go to my office-mate’s conference today, which initially I thought was at UNESCO.  Turns out it was actually in the 13^th, but there wasn’t much for me to do today at UNESCO and I really didn’t feel like going to class, so I went to the conference.  Right now it is the lunch break.  I figured I would come because he would appreciate me showing up and it would add to the good working environment.  Some of the talks are pretty interesting- it is about heritage and memory of the past, anthropology, and globalization.  I am exhausted though from the Geneva trip so I have been kind of dozing off a little bit… and now that I ate a sandwich I can’t just peace… I will have to wait until after the next presentation.

So back to talking about Geneva.  Ok, so I was really nervous about flying alone, which I had to do because the others who flew down with me ended up switching their flights because it was too expensive to stay in Geneva (I went through a program, and they covered a lot of the costs).  But, it was really cool because the Belgian guy, Michael, went with me to the airport, helped me find where I could go to check my bag, etc.  The airport is split up basically into a section for all flights going to France and then all flights going everywhere else.  My gate was right next to the other flights section, but separated by a glass wall that went up ¾ of the height of the room, if that makes sense.  I texted him that I was near A11, the section that was on the other side of the glass.  About 10 min later he showed up and knocked on the glass wall to get my attention.  We chilled together for about an hour and a half until my flight boarded (and then his did shortly thereafter I think).  We were texting back and forth and throwing notes over the glass wall.  It was pretty funny- he was designing like paper aircrafts that would perfectly fly over the wall (he is an engineer)… and I was crumbling paper into a ball to toss over.  People were definitely looking.  I also chit chatted with the guy sitting next to me who flew back and forth to Geneva in one day for some business conference.  He couldn’t find his passport and thought he left it somewhere in Geneva, which was the main topic of our discussion.  In the end, he found it in his bag, it was a good moment.

The flight was really short- just 45 minutes.  I brought back swiss chocolates, swiss watches, and swiss army knives… typical tourist.  Oh ya, and francs, their currency.

There were tons of really cool people on the trip.  In case people from the trip actually read this, which I doubt they will, even if I don’t mention your name or write about you, I probably still thought you were cool and memorable, but I guess I am just picking a few things that come to my mind right now.

So there was this other guy, Yehuda, who was absolutely hysterical.  His family originally was from Soviet Union, then moved to Israel, and now he is studying in Vienna.  We… or really me and like 2 other people… decided that he fit the stereotype of an ‘ars’ which is a term used to describe basically Israeli guido types.  It’s like the kind of Israeli you would expect to see on the show ‘jersey shore’ if you can imagine that.  He was chill though.  I roomed with carol, who is from Belgium and apparently a part of a much larger family of ‘Dwecks.’  Half of the people on the trip knew at least one of her relatives.  She was really fun- we would wake up to music in the morning and sing and dance along... and have late night chats about random things. 

The brits were also a great time.  Oliver, Olly, I’m pretty sure didn’t even realize how funny he was.  Well I would say that Danny and Oliver were the super stereotypical jewish-humor duo.  For example, when we went to the kosher restaurant and Oliver got chicken that to him looked less than cooked.  He was acting like a supreme hypochondriac, asking everyone if they thought he would get sick from the pink chicken.  Danny’s response was quite typical.  He insisted that Oliver should call over a waiter and try to get a free meal out of it.   Between the two of them the scene was absolutely hysterical… and this is just one example.

The Italian girls were pretty adorable and sweet.  One of them was telling me how apparently common it is for Jewish Italian girls to get with Jewish Swiss guys, and then conduct all conversations in English.  I don’t know why I found this so funny.  Maybe because for one the main language is Italian, for the other French, and yet both end up using English. Her and her boyfriend were actually really cute.

Then there was Jona who was I think German… I’m not sure he and I exchanged more than a couple of words, but the occasional nod and smiles probably made my day.  It was just one of those things.

Raphael, the Swiss guy, was pretty adorable.  He had such a baby face.  Miriam and I shared a few conversations over our appreciation for Moroccan Jewry, she was pretty cool.

The Canadians were such a joke, they each had such distinct personalities.  There was one, Noah? who definitely was Andy from the Office.  Like, he is the same person.  There were so many other cool people and maybe I will write more about them later, but I am sitting in the conference… so not now.

It was also awesome that we got to meet with the French, Indian, and Nigerian human rights ambassadors to the UN.  The Indian one was really funny and I feel like he was probably really fun to hang out with back in the day.  The French guy was very politically correct and very careful with choosing his words…the Indian one much less so I think.

Oy, there is so much.

Also, there is so much I want to talk about that has happened in Paris, but I’m starting to think that won’t happen.  This weekend I think we are going on a trip to Normandy and maybe also to Paris’ Disney World.  Hopefully at some point I will be able to see Alexandra and Sharon again, because they are both super sweet.  They both came with me to the Purim party a couple of weeks ago.  I also wouldn’t mind seeing Zev and Jeff again… I don’t know where they were last Shabbat… I was kind of hoping to see them, honestly.  They are very amusing, especially when they try to say ‘thriller,’ tell me there are tons of shootings in paris, and call me their closest living friend.  Ah, so good.

Also, I have been sipping wine that I got from the lunch… it’s red and pretty strong and not very tasty… but I think people would look at me weird if I tossed it… so I will continue to sip it and cringe.

I have also gotten closer to Alicia, who is one of Aryana’s friends.  I told her about a possibly internship opening for UNESCO, which I knew she would be interested in.  I don’t know if it will go through, but she had an interview and I guess is waiting to hear back.  We are going to dinner tonight I think, along with some of her buds.  After that I think I am going with some UConners to an Erasmus party.  But I can’t be out too late because tomorrow is a big day.

So tomorrow is the first meeting for discussing the possibility of creating an international society for teaching ethics.  I think it is so cool how my internship director seems to really trust me with important things.  He took all of my edits and everything for the merging of the society’s constitution (there were different versions, with comments from various ethics experts).  The document I made will actually be used as the basis for the meeting tomorrow, and will be what everyone is looking at for reference.  I love my internship.  I’m going to help with taking minutes and I guess help with anything else (oh shoot this speaker is actually really good… he just totally stole my attention for a good minute… wow.  Sidenote haha) that is needed.  I will have to be there at 8:45, about an hour before I usually show up… I can’t sleep through.

So the speaker is talking about political philosophy… super interesting.. and he has one of those voices, with the rhythm, and diction… great speaker.  Slight English accent as well, the perfect speaker for philosophical dialogue.

Clearly I am coming off as a scatter-brain… but I got back late last night and didn’t get much sleep, so give me some leeway.  Also, I just checked, and this speaker is from UNESCO… no wonder he is so good. ; )

A bientot, je suis fatigue… 

Wen: It's a Gecko!

Last night, there was a cool looking gecko crawling on the window! I think it's a gecko, if not, then I'll just say "lizard."

Wen: I got my Brisbane City Library card today!

So I finally got my library card today! I brought ID and a letter addressed to my residence (my bank card) and got it on the spot!

So far, I've only used it for the Internet access which is only 60 minutes a day! Good thing I have Internet at home!

Anyway, I tried to find the novels we're reading in English class, and none of them were available! I think all the uni students had the same idea I had... :(

Wen: Tonight's Dinner

Tonight I made another stirfry dinner, but didn't add the rice with the dish, and it came out much better... thanks to the lesson I learned before!

There are two large mushrooms, one green capsicum [bell pepper], two cloves of garlic and some cubed steak. I used olive oil, soy sauce and black ground pepper.

Also, most importantly, it tastes good! The beef is a little dry but I'm not sure how to deal with that... any pointers?  Also, I see that it's a little dark from the soy sauce... oh well!

Another thing... Australians like to shorten phrases and put "-ie" at the end.  So names like Matthew and Samuel become "Mattie" and "Sammie".  The grocery store Woolworths is commonly called "Woolies."

Today, after I cooked, Judy asked me "Are those your mushies?"  And I was like, what?  I realized that she was pointing to my bag of mushrooms. 

Wen: Pasta lunch!

Last week, I made a large batch of pasta sauce and pasta and froze it. Today I had some for lunch and it was really good!

There's chicken, zuccini and mushroom. On top, I grated some cheddar cheese.

Bon appetite (to Jennifer, who I know doesn't read my blog posts)!!
Okay, back to doing reading! Ahhhh! This philosophy is so confusing... and it's a course on logic and reasoning!

Jen: still at the conference

Guide to publishing interesting and useful information online as mentioned by the new media and human rights discussion... I hope Wen and I are doing this!
Ask: would *I* like to read this?
Would I share this with a friend
Get involved
Ask questions and start new conversations
"give a little, get a little"


I'm pretty sure we rock this blog.  Or more like Wen rocks it... and soon I will too!

Jen: Geneva Summit for Human Rights Tolerance and Democracy

I realize I haven't posted in a while, but due to the urge of Wenhui, I decided to write an entry.  I have to catch up on everything that has occurred in Paris, from Purim to Shabbats to clubs to everything else, but for right now I will blog about Geneva.  I am currently sitting at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights Tolerance and Democracy hearing from different political prisoners, etc.  It is incredibly interesting.  I came with the European Union of Jewish Students, which organized a trip to attend this conference.  I didn't think I would be selected because I am not European, but turns out there are people from Canada, Israel, etc.  The people seem awesome... Jews from all over the world like Finland, Lithuania, Austria, Belgium, England, etc.
It is really amazing here.  I heard from one of the leaders of the green movement in Iran, the first woman presidential candidate in Afghanistan, and other people who are heavily involved in governments across the world.
I need to write more about this and really everything, but I thought this even was big enough to absolutely REQUIRE some kind of entry.  I am learning so much.

<3

Wen: OMG it's REAL Chinese food!

After a long hard day of eating duck, walking around the mall and looking at fish, Ling and I went to her friends' share house and we made dinner!

Wow, it was amazing!  We chopped up two onions, four chicken drumsticks, added some yellow curry paste and let it stew.  Slightly too much water, but that's okay.  Then her friends Kristen and Estelle made a dish of pumpkin and another dish of bitter melon and eggs.  After so long of not eating food that tasted really Chinese, I was seriously enjoying the food.  It was amazing.

I forgot how much I loved Chinese food.  Even the bitter melon, which I normally DON'T enjoy tasted delicious.  Kristen, Estelle, Ling and I had an awesome discussion on China, the one child policy, their future jobs, how young people in China view family prospects and a ton of other really cool things.  They spoke Cantonese, Mandarin AND English.  Pretty cool.  

Wen: I went scuba diving!!!!! JK

I didn't actually go scuba diving, that would have been cool.  This was actually an aquarium in the Toowong Shopping Center near where we ate duck.

Their corals and aquarium plants are REAL!  Yeah, real.  All of the things in there are alive!

This was a cool looking fish.  Behind it, all the sponges, plants, anemones are real!

That's some kind of cool spiky anemone.  There was also a sea cucumber underneath... I'm just letting you know because it's not actually visible in the picture.

It's Nemo's butt!  Any kind of Nemo reference to a clown fish sighting just seems so cliche now.  I apologize for the tasteless humor. 

Wen: Some Chinese Restaurant

So Ling, Dane and I went to some Chinese Restaurant to have duck, which I hadn't had in a long time and I really wanted to eat!  It was quite delicious.  The soup was incredibly salty though.  Mine was roast duck and Ling's was some kind of duck with sweet sauce.  Dane's was fried rice.

Wen: OMG it's a Gecko!

Wow, so the other day when I was cooking I saw movement under the cabinets and in corner was this teeny weeny lizard thing!

So I thought it was cute and when I asked Judy about it, she told me that it was probably a Gecko.  They apparently eat household pests, BUT they get bigger and make annoying clicking sounds with their throats.  I also would NOT want to find one in my room or anywhere near my bed.  :)



 I wanted to play with it... aka, I wanted to see it run around, so I tried poking it.  I don't think I killed it, but it squished into the tiny crack between the cabinets and the floor tile.  :(

I'm pretty sure that geckos are quite hardy and they squeeze into small cracks all the time... I think.

Wen: Crock Pot Chicken

So it seems that I haven't blogged in a long time. This is because I've become overwhelmed with work... just kidding. It's because I've been so busy changing my schedule around and trying to figure out what classes I want to take!

Anyway, a week ago, Judy showed me how to very easily and cheaply cook a chicken and use the meat for sandwich meat. Wow, the whole process is quite easy and the only pain is clean up!

I bought a frozen chicken from Woolworth's and defrosted it for a day. We took out the chicken from the packaging and patted it dry. The frozen chickens are a cheap alternative to fresh chicken, which is a cheap alternative to raw chicken breast, which is a cheap alternative to chicken deli meat!

The spices we rubbed onto the chicken were more for color than for flavor! I think in the future, I might try and add some flavorings...? Maybe.

Anyway, we added black pepper, Chinese five spice (whatever that is, Amir you remember the star spice that you saw? I guess this is ground in), Biryani, Light Soy Sauce and Ketchup (or as Australian call it, tomato sauce). Judy said that when the chicken cooks in the Crock Pot, it doesn't get the nice roasted color as oven cooked chickens, so these spices and sauces give it some color!





After many many hours during which, I forgot about the chicken on numerous occasions, the chicken was "done." In actuality it was cooked throughly many hours before, but just leaving it in makes it more soft and tender. Btw, the Chicken was raised with some aluminum rings (or as Australians would incorrectly call it, aluminIum... yeah it doesn't make sense to me either. Haha, just kidding, no offense to any Australians reading this) and ceramic spoons so that the chicken didn't simmer in it's own juices and get super soft.







I then deboned the chicken and put it on the plate, and from the plate I bagged the chicken and froze them for lunch wraps!

Wen: First day of class and Dinner

Today was the first day of class!
 I ended up getting there 15 minutes late because I couldn't find the classroom!  Then when I sat down, I realized that the professor only spoke Alien.  That's right ladies and gentlemen of the science major... I was in a philosophy class!

Yeah, so as he kept chirping and garbling, I kept getting more and more nervous because I could only understand about 30% of what he was saying.  During times of mental clarity, I could vaguely pick out words like "the", "is" and "he".  It also didn't help that this guy talked incredibly fast.  I already have some trouble understanding the thicker accents, but when you add speed into the mix, I find myself repeating what the guy said in my head with American English.  Haha.

Anyway, I was also made aware of the fact that it was a second year class, and I was expected to go in with some background knowledge.  This was a problem because as a science major, I never took any philosophy classes... hence why I was taking this class for my philosophy gen ed. 

When I got back home, I quick enrolled in a 1000 level class called PHIL1110 Critical Thinking.  Hopefully this will go better with my lack of experience in philosophy.   The class is Friday, so maybe I'll have Wednesday, Thursday and Friday classes during the week and work on the thesis on Monday and Tuesday.

After class was over, I was dazed, and decided to go home, and brave the pouring rain.  Thankfully Judy called and said I could catch a ride with her if I took a bus to Indooroopilly Shopping Center. 

At the shopping center I got some mushrooms, tomatoes, noodles etc, and I ended up using them in my dinner concoction! 

It turned out awesome, and I was glad I finally got olive oil.  I also used chopsticks that Judy had... yay! Now, I have chopsticks!