hallo from perth. yea so i have limited internet use and i'm really cheapo so i'll probably have to jot my thoughts elsewhere and only blog once in a while. to save time, i figured i'd just copy the email i typed out yesterday and paste it here. this was intended for to zehzeh, daddy, karin, lidong, my maris librarian boys, durga, rima, my godma and.. i cant remember who else. to save time i just sent it to zehzeh and asked her to forward it. anyways so here it is. (i had to take out all the expletives cos i sent it to daddy and godma.)

i just got back frm trial karate lessons. wah so tiring.. this angmoh black belt guy nearly broke my wrist trying to teach me some defence moves but i'm fine, don't worry.

(PS: my email is 'yeow' cos these angmohs are quite culturally ignorant so they think tt since my passport says *** ** *** ******, my name must be WU. and all student emails are surname+first initial, thus the 'yeow'. i even had to go to the student admin to tell them to stop sending mails to MS WU YEO. so very grossly annyoing..)

today i had my first few lectures. been quite interesting so far. i tried out the intermediate french and i think i might take it instead of wasting time starting frm beginner level; but i will have to do a bit of catching up. tmr i only have anthropology lecture and there are no tuts this week so i have time to go out. gonna meet michelle and meiching in town and maybe i'll try and find a nice swimsuit before summer is out. the uni has a pool (only 50cents entry!).

eh eh i got my very first henna tattoo at a fairly obscene price but it's quite nicely done and quite lasting so i'm happy.

i'm not sick of hostel food yet. today we had pasta and meatballs for dinner and chocolate brownie pudding thingy for dessert. when karol's parents were here, we went to this place called Broadway which has very nice malaysian food (but they cook it very very salty- the way aussies like it).

met kenny here (newfound uncle/cousin/something) and i'll be going for dinner with him at a certain aunty pui leng's(newfound aunty) hse this sunday (where we will meet more distant relatives).this coming monday is labour day holiday. didn't even know tt till aunty lorna called me just now to offer to let me stay over the long weekend.

i went to church yesterday and ya, they reminded us in the bulletin tt ash wed is coming. so i'll be going for mass. need to pray more lah. lidong is getting holier than me haha.

the arts building here is full of peacocks and peahens and chickpeas haha. they like to strut round and act all arty-farty. quite funny. there's also tt shake-your-tail-feathers kind of bird - daaaaaaaamn cute! the crows here are the size of chickens and they sound just like the silly aussies tt are getting themselves drunk downstairs at this very moment.

right now as i speak, karol is sitting on my room floor trying to teach our indonesian friend nadya how to properly intonate "ang moh", while they both peruse nadya's yearbook and laugh at the stupid looking pple.

so far i've made friends and acquaintances frm kenya, dubai, indonesia, malaysia, singapore (hard to avoid this bunch), tanzania, russia, philippines, melbourne, perth, sydney, hongkong, japan, vietnam, cambodia, canada (BC), india, colombia, scotland. i'm a WORLD citizen! and i can safely say tt by far, the most annoying bunch are inevitably singaporeans, followed closely by drunk australians.

i like my room very much and so far i've managed to avoid getting locked out of it more than once. (raechell is in the lead with a record-breaking 6 times in less than 2 weeks, while karol got locked out 4 times in her bathrobe.)

very very fortunately, i bumped into cousin ian's gf raechael while walking to lecture and we exchanged numbers so i should be getting my linguistics notes frm her pretty soon.