Saturday, October 27, 2007

Valete and Hari Raya Open House at the High-Comm

Wow, what a weekend it has been. On Friday, Burgmann had its annual Valete dinner. It is a formal dinner held to commemorate the end of year and all those who are leaving Burgmann. I must say it was the best valete of all the three years I have been in Burgman. The event started out with pre-dinner drinks at 6pm. Unfortunately as it was raining, it had to be moved to the common room instead of being out on the front lawn as usual. Then at 6.30, we all moved into the dining hall for dinner. Dinner I must say was quite good. For the entree i had a garden salad with smoked salmon, for the main course I had chicken stuffed with spinach and ricotta both of which was yum. During Dinner, a number of speeches were given and awards presented and there was also some light entertainment from Burgmann's very own barbershop quartet made up of Matt Lendrum, Sam Yeo, Joe Opphenheimer and Alex Davies. Their presentation I must say was inspired and provided much laughs.

After dinner, my friends and I retired to the common room for music and dancing and I enjoyed myself throughly. All in all it was an excellent event and props to the organisers of this years valete, they outdid themselves this year.

On saturday afternoon, me and Jia Urnn, a fellow Bruneian studying in ANU as well along with a few other friends went over to the Brunei High Commission for their Hari Raya open house. I must say, I really enjoyed it immensely as i got to meet quitye a few other Bruneians and also enjoy delicious Malay food. I was surprised pleasantly to see that they had satay and Ketupat and also had achar. Man I haven't had those in a while.

All in all it was a wild weekend but for now its back to studying for exams. Groan...I can't wait for them to be over.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Meh...Exams...Exams...and More Exams

Well, its that time of the year again when we all have to start preparing for our final exams which are in 2 weeks time. To me it is the most trying time of the semester as the lecturers seems to love puting our assignment due dates around this time and we still have to study for exams. Sometimes I feel like just screaming in frustration but then I realise that that its not gonna help me so I just work and work and do more work. Sigh...what i wouldn't give to have it over with.

On a more positive note, several interesting events have occured since my last post. Burgmann had their annual Mid-Autumn festival with yummy mooncakes, snacks, soft drinks and green tea. I think that of all of their events, this has to be burgmann's best. Not only that, we've just had our spartos dinner where Burgmann honors those that have excelled in sports and arts for the year. It was interesting as the speaker for the event was a sportswoman who gave a very interesting talk about what she has learnt from sports. Also we've recently celebrated my friend's 21's birthday. we had this yummy strawberry cake and snacks. It was a great break from all the studying and assignments i've been doing.

Oh and I've just met another Bruneian here in Canberra. He is a postgrad and amazingly he knows my family and reads my sister's blog. Cheh, if ur reading, I met Pablo. Its really interesting how small the world is. I guess being from a country that has only over 350,000 people, its not really surprising.