12 Highlights of 2013

2013 what a year.

There were ups and downs and HSC wasn't too great, but it wasn't too bad either. It's lame, but it's a year where you do learn quite a bit about yourselves and that's always fun. Some friendships stayed, some got better, some sprung up out of seemingly nowhere. It's interesting to see everyone split ways post-HSC, but it's who you're still in touch with now, these nearly 3 months after HSC; that count in the end. If you're in the grade below and you're reading this, GOOD LUCK GUYS, it's just the beginning and it's certainly not the end of the world.

The Twitterworld (special shout out to you guys), you've been an absolute blast; it's strange having a virtual community of such oddballs still up to date with what each other is doing, or the random angst bursts, or frustration at the world with declarations in the vein of "WHAT IS LYF" achieved in under 140 characters.

After being back at school twice since HSC ended, it's strange being in a place where I spent 6 years and had some of the worst and best years of my nearly two decades of life. But I find myself being more and more keen for university, and what types of lemons life will give me there.

Graduation

Year 12 Breakfast

Muck-Up Assembly

My favourite class + the ever brilliant Cinquors

Onesie madness for common room tea parties

Athletics Carnival

Vivid Festival

Ttruong's Bday

Swimming Carnival

School shenanigans

School photos 

NYE 2012

See ya 2013, you were an interesting one!

*Disclaimer: all images are not my own

Lunch at Pancakes on the Rocks

I quite like Pancakes on the Rocks; been here a couple of times. I tend to steer clear of the crazy sugar creations though, because wow that stuff is unbelievably sweet. 

The chicken and mushroom crepe is my standard go to option, and this time I had it, it was pretty good. Last time, it was very very mushy and wasn't too great, but this time it was quite good!

The signature pancake stack is always delicious. But those pancakes are so big! After finishing the main, I could barely get down one of these pancakes: they're the size of an outstretched hand! But very very delicious, the more you eat, the better it gets.

Dinner at Hurricane's Grill

I frequently see racks and dinners from friends at this place, and when I happened to go to Bondi on a whim and got a bit hungry; Hurricane's seemed like a good place for us to go. I've also heard strange things from J, who insists that Bondi Hurricane's is better than Darling Harbour Hurricane's. I'm not sure if I really understand that logic, but I suppose I'll go with it, given that I haven't tried the Darling Harbour gig.

And with that intro, I might actually do some legit food blogging..not sure if this'll go down well *cue food blogging jargon

For starters, the salt and pepper calamari was good, but it was a bit too battery and I feel like it needed some spices seasoned on it or something to add some pow. It may just be that I love the salt and pepper calamari at Meat and Wine Co. really badly, so everytime I eat s&p squid, that's what I keep comparing it to.

The garlic mushrooms were also pretty good too, but a bit too buttery and garlic-y for my taste. I'm not a big garlic fan and wow kapowza there was a lot of garlic in those mushrooms. Maybe I like button mushrooms better? Not sure, I think this was a hit or miss for me and well..it was a miss this time around.

Mixed Salad: where can you really go wrong in a mixed salad?  Fresh + great (despite the little mountain of alfalfa sprout-doom)

For the mains, J and I shared between a full rack of pork ribs (far too ambitious) and a 350g rib eye steak. 

The pork ribs, the most popular dish at Hurricane's were ok but that may just be that I'm not a huge meat person. The meat slid off the bone quite easily, and the speciality sauce that Hurricane's marinates its ribs in was very tasty; but there was something about the ribs that didn't have me incredibly hooked and wanting more. The 'Monkey Gland' sauce was very sweet though - side note for future or anyone heading out to Hurricane's: you don't need a sauce at all if you order the ribs.

The rib eye steak was also fairly well cooked, but again, I wasn't the biggest biggest fan. First of all the meat was cooked to Medium, because J can't take my usual preference of Medium-Rare steaks. Second, it's unfortunate that I've just come home from Japan, aka the land of ridiculously tender and juicy wagyu. Although maybe by Australian standards the meat was 'tender and juicy', it really isn't up to par with the type of steaks we were eating in Japan. Not sure how I feel about this to be honest. The mushroom sauce was great though (when is it ever not though?)

The restaurant itself was very noisy and rowdy, but it's exactly the type of place where loud exclamations and outbursts of laughter between good friends can exist without getting judgemental heads turning your way every few often. Service was very good as well: J was running extraodinarily late, and even though I insisted for them to give our table away and just give us the next available one after it; they led us in and left us to our memorising of the menu. Food was prompt, waitress was ridiculously friendly and joked around with us for a bit.

I don't think I'll be back to Hurricane's anytime soon. Maybe for a drink (but from what I saw the drink menu was heavily overpriced for a poor person like me), or a salad or something small and not involving too much meat, but in a sense that defeats the purpose of going to Hurricane's. Maybe I've just realised that I'm not a big ribs and steak 'type of 'gal'. Who knows? I still see friends rushing off to Hurricane's, and the place was very very crowded; with people still going in at 9PM to start their meal, so they must be doing something right.

ATAR Shenanigans, Messina and Drinks at Mexico

When I reflect back on my HSC year it really wasn't too bad. I still did the co-curricular things that I enjoyed, I did my best with the SRC and I had a year that wasn't too unlike my other years of high school. Of course it helped attending Sydney Girls, with that energy of competition and academic excellence giving me nudges along the way; but in the end the ATAR I got was an ATAR I was pleasantly surprised with. I like to think I cracked the 99, given I have bonus points lying around for EAP (explanation: there's a leadership section under UNSW EAP's program) but I am still 0.45 off the cutoff for my course. No matter, I'll take things as they come and we'll see where the future takes me - at least I'm not 0.1 off my cutoff. Some of my friends have that, and well, that's pretty traumatising to be frank.

So with the receiving of my ATAR comes the official end of high school. Some 60 of us returned back to school briefly to chat with the teachers, give in our ATAR and for me to become Santa Claus and relinquish Japanese confectionery upon my teachers.

Afterwards, Ttruong and I walked to Messina and had ourselves some salivating sorbet.

By a stroke of coincidence, we were supposed to go to Messina with TeHe and co., but we somehow lost them at school and thought that that was that. As we dumped ourselves in a nearby park to chat and eat the gelato, TeHe promptly came over; declared that they were sitting virtually right next to us, and asked if we wanted to go for drinks.

So after chatting a while at the park, we headed off to Mexico in search for some margaritas and sangria.

The sangria tasted not unlike white wine so I found it quite pleasant, but everyone else weren't really big wine fanatics so I promptly drank 2 glasses. The margarita didn't taste alcoholic at all! So it was pretty easy to drink, but I think I prefer the sangria a bit more.

The quesadillas were ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS. So much mushroom, the tortilla-like-wrap-thing (??) was crisp..it was pretty amazing. Just had to pick out the chillis, but thank god there weren't that many chillis dispersed in these little pieces of magic.

So Mexico was pretty damn good. Everything was pretty reasonably priced and by the time we left at around 6, the place was nearly completely full. Tehe and Hwei-See said they had been there a couple of times already but hey, I think I'll be back in the very near future.

Afterwards, TeHe and her gang headed home, and Ttruong and I headed to Darling Harbour, where we met HZ at work and chatted with her for a bit before I headed off to IMAX to meet my sister so we could watch Catching Fire. 

Anyway, hope you all had a lovely Christmas! I was going to go to the Boxing Day sales today but alas I only woke up about 2 hours ago and was informed it would be a moot affair.

Lunch at Chur Burger

*I've been gone for a while now, but all will be explained: for the past month I was off gallivanting around Asia having some much-needed away time from Sydney. Anyway, before I start the trip reports I figured I'll just do this quickie review and then off we can go!*

Still semi-dead from returning down under the night before, I quickly met up with T and HZ for lunch at this burger joint that HZ apparently read 15 reviews for (supposedly what happens to you when you're stuck in Sydney post-hsc whilst the majority of the people you know are off travelling/touristing).

Between the 3 of us we ordered the vege and pork options + a side of chilli salt chips + 2 cans of L&P. The vege burger I had was very nice I think but it was a little dry although that didn't really bother me much.

I wasn't a big fan of the other one (pulled pork, chur bbq sauce, red slaw, fennel mayo), but I'm not sure if that was just because I have a bizarre preference of not eating meat when I go out or if it's because I'm not the biggest fan of pulled pork. 

The L&P soft drink was pretty damn good though, it tasted just like a Schweppes but it had a little somethin' somethin' in there that made it different and interesting. Not sure if my taste buds were fooling me.

It was a really chill place to eat tbh and great to just chat and catch up with friends, food wasn't the best of the best but they were just the right portions, not too shabby, I'll probably come back.

Friends are fools, it's good to be make breathing Australian air and seeing the blue skies.