New Term Begins

The past few weeks have been a season of Hellos and Goodbyes. I have been kept busy completing my assignments and taking care of some newbies who've arrived recently. Met a young lady from Singapore who's doing her post-graduate studies in UBC. We hit it off straight away and she bunked over in my room for a couple of days when she was waiting for her apartment to be ready and available to move in. Made friends with a young Singaporean couple and Malaysian lady at Regent's Orientation. Brand new arrivals. The Singaporean couple stays in a single bedroom suite above me and the Malaysian lady, from Kluang, lives just across the road. It's been great getting to know these new friends and helping them to settle in. We've been cooking and sharing meals together and so, keeping up the tradition. Besides these, there are a handful from England and Scotland in this intake, so it was great to finally talk to real football fans. Just to side track, I'm appalled England lost to North Ireland! My friend in Australia sure knew me well when she 'prophesied' I will be making lots of friends.

Of course, besides all that, I still remembered to play! Visited the PNE which is a huge Fair here, with lots of stuffs lined up. They have bands, dance performances, a sort of trade fair with all sorts of merchandise, all kinds of rides you can think of, games stalls not unlike those you see on TV, heaps of food stalls. Especially liked the motorcycle stunt show/competition. This Fair goes on for about two weeks. I went on this crazy ride - The Revelation is one of the fastest and most exhilarating extreme rides in the world! Designed like a giant airplane propeller, the Revelation holds two to four riders comfortably in the cockpit seats at each end of its 160 foot arm. Riders take off quickly spinning up to 100 kph and experience the same intense "G" forces as fighter pilots! The combination of the rotation, tremendous height, high speed and the rush of wind will definitely reveal the intensity of the ride. Not for the faint of heart, the Revelation is for the ultimate thrill seeker! So it spins you 3 rounds forward ... and 3 rounds backwards!

The summer 'holidays' is officially over. Managed to complete my last Summer school assignment last week. Classes starts tomorrow for the new term. Will be taking some core courses including Introductory Greek, Christian Thought and Culture (CTC) and Old Testament Foundations. CTC sounds promising and very exciting, with 25 lecturers taking different segments or something like that. Basically it's a newly designed core course to introduce some basic values and things which the faculty feels depicts what Regent stands for.

Celebrated Grandparents Day today with a friend and her in-law family. She's from FGA KL, married to a Malaysian whose family have migrated here for many years. The whole family are committed Christians. I actually didn't know her very well when she was in KL so it was really sweet of her to extend me the invitation. Quite a large family and a few other guests were present too. And boy, what a treat it was. Her father-in-law cooked laksa and she prepared satay, complete with all the condiments and 'kuah'! Better than anything you can get here. Of course, you can imagine me and laksa...with tears streaming down cause too pedas! So shy. Been feeling a bit down the past 2 days so I'm grateful it ended on a high note.

Happy Mooncake Festival next Sunday - enjoy the mooncake and lantern playing even if you don't 'celebrate'! There's such a large Chinese community here that they even get the famous Hong Kong brands of mooncakes flown in and sold at the Asian supermarkets.