Tantillus

It is strange that one day you are considered a teenager and the next, you are not, according to the orbit of the Earth around the Sun hitting the same point of when you were born however many years ago. I still get nervous driving without parental supervision, still think eating gum in class makes me a badass, still laugh till I'm gasping for air at Nickelodeon shows and I still can't cook (unless instant noodles and premix pancakes count as cooking).

So for my birthday, I had breakfast with my group at The Chalkboard Cafe. I had the breakfast tasting platter, which had a bit of everything. It all tasted really good and was worth the trek there early in the morning.

Afterwards we went shopping for a bit around the city then two hours of karaoke. It was a nice catch up with everyone after the aftermath of uni exams and assessments. Now two months of no responsibilities before flying across the Pacific Ocean with a majority of this lot. I'll try make the most of the summer break being as unattached to the air conditioning in my bedroom as possible. Which means I have to go outside and do things in the heat. Help.

Aureus

How cool would it be if you could see bokeh in real life? Like you're lying on some patch of grass, where a dog has probably chucked a dump on before, staring off into the distance and there's these light coloured dancing balls hiding in the trees. (If you can't tell, I'm obsessing over the bokeh in these photos all taken by Andy.)

So I finally hung out with Andy and Annie at Newtown after uni. We explored the main street a bit, got accosted by RSPCA recruiters ("What did I tell you about smiling at strangers?"), ate at Black Star Pastry and Guzman y Gomez, saw Janice Lee (known as 'jayesslee' on YouTube) with her husband eating at a Thai restaurant and kept walking back and forth wishing the window that separated us would disappear like for the snake at London Zoo in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

We went back to uni and chilled on the grass for a while, watching people at the quad graduate and rooting for a guy to drop his laptop on his face. It makes me wonder if that'll be me one day. Not the dropping laptop on face part (been there, done that), but the graduating part. The things I want now, and the things I want for my future are two completely different conflicting things. Yeah... Anyway, then I played in the ball pit and it was all fun and games until I saw a booger looking thing stuck on a ball and had to get out of there ASAP.

Coogee

My favourite kind of beach is the one I’m not in. I don’t like the feel of salt and water stuck all over me. I don’t like the change rooms and bathrooms there. I don’t like the thick and sticky feel of sunscreen. I don’t like how the beach air turns my hair into twigs. I don't like waves smacking into me, determined to knock me over. I don’t like how the sand makes it twice the effort to walk - I’ve already gone out of bed and made the effort to come all the way out here, why would you make it more difficult for my willpower to walk?

But I went to the beach with Trang anyway, because I have been a potato for far too long.

The only thing I liked was the rock pool. The lack of sand and fortress of rocks made me forget I was at the beach for a moment. There were also little crabs and fishes. I tried to google "how to hold a crab at the beach" so I wouldn't get snipped, but all I could find were instructions to dig holes for crabs to fall into. Thanks, wikiHow.

I came home and excitedly told dad that I saw crabs and his first reaction was "DID YOU CATCH ONE" then quickly became sensible and told me it's illegal to take them home. IT'S LIKE HE KNEW MY INTENTIONS.

Epulo

We went to Chefs Gallery as an early Father's Day dinner. You can watch the cooks hand make the noodles and all the dishes have a modern look to it. Surprisingly, I liked everything except the dessert. I don't like sesame so the piggy buns weren't for me and the snails were weird. The ice cream was the best part.

We'll definitely be back to try everything else!

Chinta Ria

Food coma night out with the group at restaurants that make our wallets cry in mercy. We had dinner at Chinta Ria, which is a Malaysian and Chinese restaurant. A big laughing Buddha statue greeted us at the door. I found the food there really ordinary and the dishes were really small and not worth it. The highlights would be the roti and vegetarian curry, and I'm not a vegetable person so it was that good. But I would just go find a local restaurant for those dishes next time because it's not really worth going back.

For dessert, we went to Lindt Chocolat Café. We got "share" platters that I could've probably finished myself.

SO MUCH KEK. MY HEART SAYS NO, BUT MY STOMACH SAYS YES.