National Day Cornwall Celebration!

Heya~ So yeah we did the celebration yesterday. There was a celebration at main campus but honestly we're in a bit of a strict budget so we didn't go so we made a small lunch celebration cookout! :D We all met at Tesco Metro to get ingredients (the 4 Bruneian ladies in Cornwall). Too bad the fresh seafood shop was closed on sundays so we didn't get to make the infamous crab dish BUT . . we then get to have the honey-blackpepper beef. :D

Ps: I'm sorry that you have to endure looking at the mouth-watering dishes below :P

The main dishes:

Telur goreng extra special as it was made by both Tiqah and Dina ^^

Honey-black pepper beef =9 made by Dina

Tom Yum made by me 

 The 'kudap-kudapan' :

Apple + sambal kicap belacan

Cucumber + sambal belacan by Dina

 The dessert ( western desserts) :

Scones which hungry people teseliur before actually cooking

My oreo pudding turned ice cream haha

Strawberry coated with chocolate by Tiqah

Rice and the dessert section

The finished products! Well presented - me thinks ^^ Worth all the hard work! Dina and Tiqah did most of the cooking though so all the credits go to them *clap2* 

We were all bloated after all that food. Glad we did it. So HAPPY NATIONAL DAY BRUNEI! ( All the colors of our flag :D )

All-in-all it was a nice weekend. Today nothing much interesting happened. With one exception, it was actually SUNNY today ! Me and Cally ate our lunch outside at the garden benches. The bad news is I slept in both of my lectures thanks to sleeping late last night *sigh* I'm being such a bad student. I think I should drink coffee every morning now. AND I need to do my field diary thing and finish it by Wednesday for inspection. AND I need to pick a collection theme to present to my lecturer on Wednesday as well. Tonnes of work, too little time. Might do the 11pm Nocturnal Walk tomorrow if I can afford it. We'll see how it goes. So till next time.. need to start on my diary thing. Chao~

Volunteering at the Monkey Sanctuary!

Yay! Another productive day! I was late for the bus for this trip cause the bus wasn't that frequent today and also I should've taken the 41 bus instead of the 2 bus. That would've saved me from being late :/ but oh well what's done is done. Alhamdulillah the bus waited for me though. The journey took longer than I expected. It was said on the e-mail that it would only take us an hour and a half but it took us 2 hours (the bus driver went on the wrong road) but there were a lot of new sceneries so I don't have much to complain.

Just realized, it's not actually the right path but you get the rough idea how long it was

Got this from google - the bird view of the Monkey Sanctuary

We can barely make out the outline of cages and the house there (from the above picture).

Here we are!

All ready in my wellies, still got dirt on me :s

The enclosures are a bigger than what I expected 

Pretty too - nice runways interconnecting the enclosures

Seh Ling was there too

So as Cally ^^

These are some of the monkeys open to the public: 

One of the Wooly Monkeys

Black-capped Capuchin

Another Capuchin

Wooly Monkey - My first time seeing a monkey eating GRASS

I was working on this post last night but I fell asleep *typical me* so I'll just continue where I left off. Don't mind the date. This happened on the 26th of February ^^. I just woke up and WOW my body's so sore! - especially my back. Thanks to shoveling mud yesterday or was it due to sleeping on the uncomfortable chair in the bus. Seriously it hurts so bad.

Ok enough of me whining, straight to the story - when we got there we were give an introductory talk on how the place started. It was formed in 1964 by a monkey-pet owner who studied about them more so than the average pet-owner. He/she then realized that monkeys are wild animals and they need their social life instead of being kept in cages alone for years and years hence set up the sanctuary. The pet trade is the main danger for primates especially the cute little monkeys like marmosets and squirrel monkeys. I was surprised at how bad it was, even London apartments have cages in them to keep their pet monkeys! Man I guess that's no surprise actually, as monkeys are cute of course some would take them as pets. Not sure why people would want the big ones though but yeah people have their own preferences. But yeah there are at least 5000 primates being kept as pets all around UK - not counting the small cute ones as no license are required to keep them, unlike the big ones like capuchins. So we can only IMAGINE how many are there being kept in houses or apartments all around the UK only, not to mention Europe and everywhere else! Monkeys are smart creatures so imagine humans were kept in cages all their life, how would you feel about it? The monkeys in the sanctuary all came in the state of poor health psychologically and physically. Dental problems, diabetes, abnormal bone formations, over or underweight not to mention high stress levels - all were victims from the pet trade as of being put in cages and being given inappropriate diet. There are 26 present in the sanctuary now and most are healing well and living quite happily in their own social groups. But if the pet trade is not stopped, there would be no end to this. Ah I forgot to mention, the law says that it is completely legal to keep them as pets. I personally find that absurd. They should ban the primate pet trade altogether - be ethical and think of what's best for them and not us.

Being all protective there :) But it is true and we should raise people's awareness on this matter.

One thing I'd thought I'd never had done - I ate ham yesterday, pure accident of course. We were provided lunches and they were hand made sandwiches, I took the one labelled 'tuna with cheese sandwich'. It looks a bit weird cause there were veges in it but I trusted the label and ate it. But then I didn't taste any tuna so I checked it and ask Cally if it looks like tuna to her and she said it looks like ham. I was SHOCKED and froze for a bit. I stopped eating and threw it away. I honestly didn't know what to do but mom said, "tawakkal saja . . apa buleh buat." so that's what I'm doing. Moral of the story : Don't be too gullible and check before you eat.


Then we head out and do some shoveling. After that made some enrichments for the monkeys to make them active and keep them interested.

We reached Tremough at about 6.15pm, thankfully there was a bus there to go to Falmouth but I had to pay £2.60 as it was past 6 and it's the weekend so no student discounts. Jolly~

We're gonna have a cookout afterwards here with Dina and Tiqah for lunch so I'll update on that later.. Tata~

Long Depressing Days.

It's been raining a lot this past few days. And a lat was going on in Uni, I mean classes and activities and such. Fuh~ The reason why I haven't updated my blog for a while, cause I'm tired at the end of the day. I'm just gonna put everything in before I forget now. So . . . on the 23rd, last Wednesday, we went for the Swanpool and Gilly rockpool field trip. It was all sunshine that I just wear thin clothes, as is I didn't wear my coat, just a hoodie.

A lady feeding the ducks

Hungry ducks lol

close-up on a coot!

Coot playground :p

Swanpool Lagoon - rain?

Gilly Rockpools

The tides coming in!

the misty looking background was actually the rain :s

 Loovve the weather at the rockpools~! *sarcastic mode* haha the rain started pouring when we were waiting for the minibus to go to the rockpools from the lagoon. We could've just walk though instead of waiting and standing in the rain. One good thing is that I get to use my binoculars :DD And the coots were really CUTE and FUNNY! They actually come up to us ( that's how I got the close-up picture ), maybe waiting to be fed lol. But we don't have food with us at the time :/ We've pretty much given up ID-ing stuff in the rockpools, thank to the rain my books are ruined . . AGAIN! *sigh* 

Begedils!

YUM~~ First in ages

Where'd all the potato go?? Just the shell's left hmm

Santi made the begedils that night. It was painstaking but worth it. Thanks Santi! Made my depressing day a lil' bit not depressing ❤

Then yesterday was a long day as well from 12pm to 8pm! Not as bad as Cally though, hers start at 9am!! We just have class and a dry lab session on intake rate again. Which reminds me, I have a thousand word report due on Thursday, need to start soon! And we had our first BeeSoc talk! Which is why we end at 8pm but it was so much fun! Berny the Beeman gave a talk about bees and how he kept them. It was really interesting, full of interesting facts. The one thing that spoils it is that there are people in the room next door making a hella lot of noises . . which was really annoying cause I can't hear Berny clearly. They still made a lot of noises even after Andy (our Zoology lecturer last term ) told them off ( at least I think he did as the noise died out for a few minutes ).

Then today, rain~ ~ I don't know why it's always raining when we do our Group Walk, but at least we did it early and some of our usual paths are blocked by construction sites so saved up our time lol, Which is good as it started POURING by noon. It was still raining at 4pm. How depressing not to see the sun so very often anymore. And we learned on how to identify the footprints of doormice and woodmice. Complicated processes, didn't know that it could be that bad. And I skipped the Ecosoc Talk on dragonflies, not in the mood.

Anyhoo that's pretty much it, looking forward for the volunteering trip to the monkey sanctuary tomorrow!! Hope the sun's out, amiiinnn~~ I should be sleeping now as I have to be on campus at 9.30am tomorrow. Toodles~ ^^

Brunei's National Day, the 27th!

It's not officially the 23rd yet here but it already is in Brunei so think of it as an advanced one :D Congrats Brunei for being independent for 27 years! and more years to come ♥ Amin~ here are some of the pictures from the net:

The Sultan of Brunei

The official logo for this year's celebration

Usually I don't really think much about the National Day. I just looked at it as a holiday, nothing really special. But there is something really special about it. Maybe it's just that youngsters like me didn't know what it's like before the Independence, that I don't know how to appreciate it. Hmm being patriotic? lol maybe . . it's just that being here makes me feel that I've been taking things for granted as everything's so easy, so it's a bit of a shock that you have to do everything by yourself, for instance whilst shopping usually the cashier puts our shopping stuffs in plastic bags right, but here they just give you the plastic and you yourself  have to put them in. That's why Brunei is the best ^^


I just did my test this afternoon, maybe not such a good idea to do it after a workshop and two consecutive lectures cause my brain was a bit slow :/ The workshop was good, at least now I know what tutors are looking for in our essays. The 2 lectures was a bit too much I think, sitting there for 2 hours, BORING~ I actually fell asleep in the earlier one, not intentional of course. Maybe because I stayed up late last night. It was in the "plant man's" lecture too! *The new lecturer's nickname :P* Now as per some requests to see the lecturer's face  . . . 

Hahaha did I described him wrongly last time?? Maybe I wasn't being clear but yeah I don't mean cute as in HOT, but cute as of the above XP disappointed? lol but he is a really cool lecturer. I'll try to record his laugh some other time, it turns out the lectures weren't recorded :( oh well~ He does look like a professor in Harry Potter right?


The funniest thing happened today during his lecture lol. Some people just come to lectures but didn't really pay attention, instead they just chatter around, especially in video-linked lectures. They're just making it harder for other people to concentrate on the lecture AND to actually hear what the lecturer was talking about. Lindsay just couldn't stand it anymore today that she actually shouted, "Shut up!" to them right in the middle of the lecture. Just to make things clear, usually the lecturer can't hear us as they turn down the volume while they were giving the lecture at their end ( then main campus ). But then prior to Lindsay's shout, we heard an echo of it from the video! Poor man, he must've been shocked hearing someone said Shut up when he was talking haha. We didn't expect that at all. She explained her reasons and he responded by saying, " . . . at least someone's paying attention, ha ha." How cool is that ? it was a good laugh for us in the lecture theater though :D


Oh yeah about my test, I am really happy with it. Guess what I got . .

:DDD 


I have a field trip to swanpool tomorrow. Been there a few times already. Wish I could've just go from home instead of meeting in Uni and use the minibus to go back here. Seems a bit pointless but yeah just stick to the plan.. That's all for now, till next time ^^

Glad, Thankful and Happy but the Happiness was Tainted by One Thing . . .

I'm not sure where to start, the good or the bad . . I think I'll just go with the order of when they occurred. I promised to post the pictures of the finished product right so here they are:

The small one

The big one 

My first piece <3

Ok I know the one in the big container doesn't look so good BUT trust me it's AWESOME! haha I have Santi's and Shamsa's taste buds to prove it! lol but it's not the best batch of course. If only I have a mortar and a pestle to crush the oreo cookies to decorate but nope so yeah as long as it's delish~

We had a new lecturer today for Physiology, I love him already, he's just so cute! He's the first lecturer that actually gave us a break in the middle of the lecture! Surprised me and my coursemates. Just to get things straight, the lecture was video-linked so he's actually in the main campus. And OMG his laugh is to-die-for! haha he's funny, have a laugh that makes us laugh - in a cute way, and the lecture isn't as boring as I thought it would be, I mean it's on Photosynthesis so I'm expecting to be bored with repetitive infos and fall asleep :p But we actually enjoyed the lecture so hope he's gonna be with us for some time :D He reminds me of some professor in Harry Potter with that voice of his and the way he talks about plants too, it's like talking about an interesting history. Maybe it's just me exaggerating but that's what I honestly think.

Didn't do my test today though. Am gonna do it tomorrow instead, so I can get some real revision lol. I've revised all of them except the calculations so I should be fine, plus it's an open book test ^^.

Then the happiest moment of my day was that . . . . . . . MY BINOCULARS AND INDOMIE HAVE ARRIVED!!!!! Haha FINALLY! I was fussing about them just yesterday and it actually arrived TODAY!!

My huge Amazon box containing the indomie and binoculars

My waterproof fogproof NEW binoculars! 

40 packets of indomie!!

Haha I'm so happy!! Alhamdulillah they arrived safely. Thank Allah I don't have to go to Truro to get them. And thanks to Syamsa as well for ordering a lot of stuff from Argos, hence using HDNL as well.

Shamsa's Argos stuff

So yeah more pressure for them to actually get the items sent to us. Huahuahua . . but still I'm not gonna order anything big for now, not yet at least to avoid all this stressful waiting.

My first indomie since last year?

Ok maybe not, but it's been ages, that's for sure. Plus the pudding that I made yesterday for dessert, h e a v e n l y ~

Then the sad and HORRIFIC bit . .  There was this video someone shared on facebook saying that " . . this girl should not live . .", " . . what a b*tch . . ", you get the picture. So I was curious of course . . . I regretted ever for clicking that "play' button, as the image of innocent animals were brutally killed by a psychotic japanese girl was burned in the depths of my mind . . I'm not being racist here, I'm surprised as well. She spoke in japanese in the end, so I'm not sure if I'm just assuming things but other people who commented on the video said that she is, so it's a safe assumption. I almost cried watching a cute little bunny being trampled on by her heels, and she purposely did it slowly, the pain that the bunny had to endure . . I can still hear it's cries. Blood on the floor and two more dead. Oh God, I don't understand in the point of doing that. I was shocked and speechless. I mean how can a human being be so cruel?! A woman at that! and how can the camera person just watch all this brutality in silence??? Maybe I'm too naive to believe that all humans have some kind of humanity in them, which I believe that most do, but that girl can only be a DEMON to be able to do such a thing, not a trace of human in her. Such a horrible thing : ((

After reminiscing about the video, my mood dropped again. So I'll be off now, till next time.

Sunny Weekend

It was really hard for me to wake up yesterday for the breakfast out, but thankfully I did in the end lol. But we were late anyway, at least me and Santi, Tiqah and Dina was already in town. It turns out the place that we were supposed to go was still closed and will only open at 9.30am so we decided to go somewhere else that's open. And the place is Caffe Nero. I went past the place all the time but never did have the real desire to go in. It's actually quite a comfortable place to hang out in, they have comfortable sofas too. The only drawback is that the food is quite expensive . . or is it cause I'm broke haha.. but a jacket potato costs about £2 in uni while a tuna sandwich here costs £3.95 and the jacket potato was a generous portion too. So yeah I might as well make myself a tuna sandwich haha butt anyhoo it was fun just sitting there and chat with the girls ♥ Sadly Tiqah had to leave by 11am for her road trip to St. Ives.


Since it was really sunny yesterday we went to the beach! Plus Dina haven't been there before so it was a nice opportunity :D

wanna play in the water :D

Hope you had a good time Dina :)

 

Ok it wasn't that sunny at first but then the SUN did come so we were "supposedly" sunbathing at the benches then lol. I wanted to like run in the waves like shown on TV but didn't work out that well cause first : the water is freezing and second : dogs were running in the waves too at the time so yeah.

Then we toured Maritime again . . just for the sake of it lol.

The Maritime House where we're staying 

Boats at the docks

The big space in the middle

 Then Santi stayed home to start her work while me and Dina went touring the town lol. By the time we finished it was 4pm already and boy I was tired. Watched movies again, Avatar this time. It was AWESOME. Love the plot of the story, about nature and all, and the subtle message that we should cherish our trees ^^

Mm I was feeling annoyed when I woke up this morning, mostly because of my long late arrival of the stuff that I bought from amazon: my binoculars and indomie. Seriously, HDNL pisses me off !! I mean how hard can it be to ring the bell or at least find the reception area to leave my parcels?? To come here all the way from Truro and take the parcels back for 'safekeeping'?? for like 10 times already. Argh I'm stressed out because of that. It was supposed to arrive on the 3rd of February but . . man I needed to cool off then so I made the oreo pudding at last, I finally got the chance to make 'em.

For the pudding

Oreos for the base

fruit pieces for the middle

The base layer

It's not finished yet and they're in the freezer at the moment to solidify but I'm itching to eat them now! lol.. have to be more patient. I think the hormones are interrupting my body processes now cause I'm hungry ALL the time! Food is all that I can think *sigh* Not really a bad thing but such a pain. Will post the pictures of the finished products as soon as it's done.

My breakfast for today

Actually lunch and dinner as well there's tonnes left on the stove ^^ Yum~

I have a test tomorrow on Physiology and I haven't revised yet. Gosh have to be more enthusiastic to do revision.. but I'm HUNGRY~ again! so after I eat,will revise tonight . . gonna go eat now so till next time!

Ps: Good luck to all of you who's having tests next week!!