Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Mamaks, Mr. Ulcer, the Prince of Egypt and "Masarap Kurotin ang Puwet mo."

So last week we had our group marketing presentation. We did our project on Zara, the Spanish clothing retailer that is now an interntional brand (if i may quote from my introduction). My group and I worked really hard on the project, its really the best group I've ever had (See picture below). Poor Stewart, as the only boy, he learned more about fashion than he ever wanted to. Hehehe.

Friday was Mamak night. It was $4, which is a bargain for eat all you can even in the Philippines. (conversion = PhP208, cheaper than Saisaki!) Met up with my friend Natasha and her friends - I am spelling this as they are pronounced - Aaliyah and Ah-liya and we walked over to uni from her house and Sydney Uni Village. Sydney Uni Village is the expensive university housing in newtown. You can have your own room in a 5 room, 4 room, 3 room, double or studio apartments. The cheapest is the 5 bedroom at a whopping Aus$ 192. This does not include the $40 that you have to pay weekly for food credit in the village. Needless to say, you gotta have a lotta money to live there.

We got to Manning Building where I met up with Dan and Sacha. Turns out the thing was in the back, we all thought it would be in the bar. We were in line, starving, for quite some time and Colin made it just in time to find us in line. The food was amazing. I checked to make sure everything was okay for Mr. Ulcer, and managed to take one bite of something curry like that wasnt so spicy before having to pass on that particular dish. There was curry, roti, satay, veggies and of course... DILIS!!! I was so excited. I ate so much dilis. They eat their dilis with peanuts (why?) and there is no suka but what the hell. I was so happy I took a picture, just to show Jojo: look I have diliiiis!!! We are on a mission to find dilis and tuyo here, food which cannot be apparently brought into the country due to quarantine. Sigh.

We all ate so much and kept going back for multiple servings. Dan especially went back for a lot, except he didnt like dilis, and I kept going back for the roti bread, which I ate plain. After all the eating they had a raffle draw. There were about 50 people there and I was the only non-Malaysian Asian and our table had the only white people in the entire place: Colin, Dan and Sacha. In our 6 person table (us plus Natasha and Kian, ive forgotten her name i think this might be it) 3 people won, and we got both first and second prize! Natasha got the $30 Myer gift certificate and Colin won the movie tickets. They gave out a lot of prizes, including "lucky" and "unlucky" draw. Lucky draw was ramen noodles, which Dan won and unlucky draw consisted of various prizes like a rubber ducky which one guy in the other table won. Since all the white men won prizes, that left Sacha as "the only white one who didnt win". We had a good laugh about it afterwards, before heading home.

When I got home I had some chocolate as dessert and then I went to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night with a very bad ulcer attack. My ulcer attacks come in different variations: acid, gas, or both. I would prefer acid since it all goes away after I throw up, but noooo. This time it was combination ulcer. I was up from maybe 230 to about 430 when my housemates got up to pee (you can hear people walk the wooden floors in front of my room). Then I couldnt sleep lying down because the acid was going up my esophagus and giving me heartburn.

The next morning I went to the doctor. My housemates were all very nice and concerned, and offered to drive me and stuff. I called Sacha and she came over, brought some soup, apple and cinammon (good but a whole darn lot) and lent me her bear, Belito (named after the 3 people that gave him to her). Then I went back to bed. I woke up after my nap to go to church with Dan. Once again we were late to make the one at Andee's church - which we have yet to find - so we walked to another church off my street which turned out to be closed. So we decided, dinner today, mass tomorrow. Dan had spaghetti bolognaise and i had chicken ceasar salad without dressing and herb bread. It was semi-boring.

I have spent the week eating soup and oatmeal and grilled chicken from oporto, which has saved my life. I tried eating an instant pasta meal with tomatoes this monday but it was the wrong thing to eat. The chart I found on the internet said that I could have peanut butter but they were wrong. Moses and Handle both ended up eating my peanut butter sandwiches.

Moses, my housemate's doggie likes kickboxing. The other day I tried to practice my kickboxing in the kitchen, to the tune of the pulp fiction soundtrack and he kept jumping around. I almost hit him several times, I had to keep going Moses, go, go! But he kept coming back and wagging his tail excitedly. There's a particular kick that we do that is aimed for your calf where you slide like you do in soccer and I kind of touched him then. Thank God I wasnt being so violent as it was the first kick. I am trying to do what my instructor says I need which is develop more aggression during fighting (Yes, D.E.B. I have to be more aggressive - I told y'all it would scare my boss!).

Everytime I call Moses I feel like God. Like suddenly I've morphed into the burning bush and I go, "Moses, Moses!" and wait for him to come over. Inevitably my voice morphs into this Prince of Egypt-esque impression where I try to call the character played by Ralph Fiennes (i think) and it goes, "Mooooooses, Mooooooooses". I keep expecting him to say, "Let my people go!" and part the canal down the street. Or something. It does work though, and he responds to the "godlike" Moses call.

Monday I hung out with Laura, Dan & Colin. They ate at a Japanese restaurant that I couldnt have anything but tea in. Next week I will eat there!!! We ended up at urban bites, drawing castles and laughing. I taught them all interesting phrases in Filipino. They had specific requests. Colin's was to get funny semi-lecherous lines to pick up girls (I taught him to say, "Masarap kurotin ang puwet mo") and Laura's was "Teach me to say 'I like big butts and I cannot lie' and 'I'm looking for a soldier with a nice ass'", the latter of which she could say in Hebrew and French (She's from Montreal and is Jewish) which was really cool. Dan didnt seem to have any trouble pronouncing anything, even if he didnt ask for any specific lines and just read of theirs. Laura had a bit of trouble with the "NG" and "NGA", possibly because she speaks french and it was kind of coming out frenchy. Colin did pretty well, except he stumbled a bit with the kurotin, which was the most important line in the sentence. He has resolved to try all his lines on Andee to see if she slaps him, in which case he was being effective.

Yesterday I finished my first exam, in Marketing, where I used my Atenean legacy of making bola to the best of my abilities. I was also glad to learn that I was not the only one who felt that I repeated myself as the questions seemed to ask the same things over and over. Tomorrow I leave for Melbourne with Jojo and Dan on a 12-15 hour road trip, where yes, I will take to the wheel and drive on the other side of the road for the first time. We'll be back on Monday and my next entry should be Melbourne oriented.

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