Year end highlights!

Around this time of year, people tend to write their top 10 lists. I won't be doing that because frankly there's too much. Don't you guys think I suffer enough from verbal diarrhoea?! I can't even pick my absolute favourite dessert. So here's just some short commentary on my supposed *Best Of...*. They may not represent the absolute best, just the memorable based on my commonly discussed topics.

Highlight event of the year:
The Great European Adventure 2007. At the end of The Great European Adventure 2004/5, Cousin Linh said to me *You'll be back*, and three years later, so I was! For how wonderful it was, go read the month of September plus these entries. And then of course there was the Ilaya-Kelly wedding and the diet that went along with it. That's one even the lab won't forget too quickly, me cracking it at all an sundry made it a thing to fear. And being voted *best* by my peers. That made me pretty chuffed although I wonder how much of it was from bullying :P

Movie of the Year:
You know what? I just think it may be Enchanted! Being Asian, I usually don't pay to see movies twice (if at all) but I was convinced to pay to see two movies twice. The first movie was Transformers which I saw at a normal cinema and then followed it up by seeing it in all its IMAX glory. However, despite seeing Enchanted on Boxing Day...I must confess I saw it again last night. Rare is the movie that makes me want to see it twice in the space of two days! The Simpsons was definitely the most anticipated (and I don't care what other people say, I sure enjoyed it!) while HP5 was definitely the most disappointing.

Book of the Year:
Usually when people give me a book voucher as a present, I spend it right away. Not this year. Harry Potter 7 INSPIRED me to wait two months for a book! And then I stayed up until 3am to finish reading it so I could tell Pooey. And then I got many more months entertainment torturing her about what transpired in the story. Hehehehe.

Sport of the Year:
Pilates has made that line down the centre of my gut from wishful thinking to reality (on skinny days), but the sport that defined the year is Brazilian Jujutsu. Yes-siree. That's another thing the lab won't forget for a while. But I've decided to give it up now that the year is over - the injuries were just too much to bear :( So next year's sports are a toss between rock-climbing and kendo!

I can't decide who is the year's best eye candy. It's just too difficult! So instead I'm just going to list them:

Henry Cavill
(oh, Edward...)

Milo Ventimiglia
(thankfully the emo hair is gone)


Pasha Kovalev
(you have to watch the video, the girl being shown was his dance partner of the week, Sara von Guillen)
Monica Bellucci
(still the woman who could turn me)

Jensen Ackles
(Grand Empress, I disagree, Dean over Sam ANY DAY)

McDreamy & McSteamy
(doctors do not really look like this)

And of course, my lovely husband Marat Safin.
(Arrives in Melb on New Years Day!!!)

This will be my last entry for the year because tomorrow I will be setting up NYE Cocktail Party at the Windsor. I hope y'all have a wonderful blow-out NYE party and don't go home with too many strangers. *cough*

Year-End Roundup.

So here is my 2013 round up now that the year has come to an end.

After presenting some of my results in Melbs at the start of the year, I spent a lot of this year writing manuscripts. One of my papers was accepted in September, and for those who don't know, the paper that I wrote in a week was also accepted just before Christmas :D. Other things finally started to work, and it also took me to some workshop meetings on the Starnberger See and German Alps. After all this, I suppose I can say that it was a pretty good work year over all. For those who don't know, I'll actually be joining a new group in 2014 - the people with whom I wrote the one week paper! This both thrills and frightens me as I'll be leaving behind the crowded pool of diabetes research and move into the crowded pool of cancer research. 

After ringing in the new year in Davos,.I spent a lot of time travelling in 2013! As part of the to Melbs in Jan/Feb, I also swung by Singapore and Radelaide to catch up with old friends. Eight weeks after returning to Germs after that trip, I was back in Melbs for Pooey and Smee's wedding. I also go to walk around and drink in some Australian flora. I caught up with them again in Rundon in June, before H and I went off to Helsinki and St. Petersburg. I started summer with a long weekend in Budapest and got my feet super dirty at the Balaton Sound EDM fest in Zamardi - it was worth it :D. I stayed in Munich for most of the summer - not a bad decision given the heatwave - before catching up with H, Laulita, and Rosa in Rome - when I finally got to visit Pompeii! During October, I went off to Solingen and Wurzburg as part of the Wedding Road Trip, then caught up with Marene and Studds in Belgium in November. Unbelievably, the year ended as it started because I was back in Singapore and Australia again in December. And despite all of that, I'm STILL not a Krisflyer gold member!   

This year's movie of the year is going to be a controversial choice. It is actually...One Direction: This is Us by Morgan Spurlock and featuring One Direction. Why? Because it has totally converted me to them. Despite only seeing it for the first time when I got back to Melbs in December (1D aren't big in Germany), I somehow watched it 2 more times before the year was out. But okay, if you want a real movie as my movie of the year, I'll say it was Rush, which I also watched multiple times before the end of the year. 

2013 was also a year of sport with visits to the Aus Open and joining in on the Champions League celebrations, parties, and all-round fun. Looking back, it was a pretty good year! Here's to 2014 being even better!

Sport of the Year!!!

Long time readers of this blog will be aware that I try to do something known as *Sport of the Year* - at the beginning of the year, I find a new sport at which I have no experience and try to attain some sort of proficiency in it. Well, I finally have my sport of 2010. It is shooting.

*crickets chirp*

I know what most of you are thinking: *Who is crazy enough to give Mallymoodle a gun?* Well, I was invited to handle some firepower on a wintry afternoon by Mrs. K because she wanted to shoot (a gun) before her dirty 30 and we went to the outer suburbs to the firing range.

Getting attired with my eye and ear protection!

Patiently watching Mrs. K receive instructions and taking aim...when are they giving me my gun?!?!

Possibly kinda important, apparently I'm supposed to hold the gun upsides rather than sideways in my hand

And making sure I point it in the 'right' direction

Getting more advice...although interestingly, not how to aim the gun...

Reloading. As Mr. K said, "Errr...you looked scarily comfortable and competent handling that thing..."

EAT LEAD, TARGET!!!!

"Don't you cheek me, mister!!!*

We both found the experience highly invigorating! You think it's easy to hold up something and aim it at something that's only 20m away, but it's not! Out of 25 bullets, I only hit the target once. I'm not concerned, it just means when a gun is in my hand, EVERYONE is in danger cos I'll spray them anywhere! I hit it more often once I was moved from the revolver to the semi-automatic pistol - when you're shooting one of those, it's like you can just fire away one after the other like a movie, if only I could hold the revolver in one hand and the pistol in the other with crossed arms, John Woo-style! Oooh yeah!

And so, the two of us have discovered a new sporting experience was as well as instilling fear into Mr. K! We're all going shooting again in a fortnight somewhere closer in! Stay away from Port Melb, people!

Peaceful shooting, people!
(Always Asian!)

Bouldering!

Following pilates in 2005, teaching myself how to ride a bike in 2006, Brazillian jujutsu in 2007, I've decided that Bouldering is going to be my sport of the year partly due to The Pom's influence and since it's considered an even harder version of what was supposed to be my epic fail of a sport for 2008, rock climbing.

I can attest to the harder bit - I found rock climbing pretty easy with all the ropes and stuff. But without ropes it's freaking difficult! I can pretty much only do the super-easy green trails and need to drop the fear factor. When did I get so afraid of falling?! Especially since I'm falling onto giant crash mats?! Curse age and experience. The good thing would be that you don't need a belayer but that bad thing is I seem to only progress when people are yelling stuff at me so I need someone who doesn't mind standing around yelling at how I'm supposed to position my feet and how I'm never going to get to the next hold.

Anyway, I managed to get a photo of The Pom actually climbing and overhang but because it was on my crappy phone camera, it looks like a smudge so I won't upload it here. What I did manage to photograph is the chunk of skin that I managed to rip off my hand while I was trying to get myself from one hold to another!

Anyway, I hope to stick to this perhaps once a week augmented with gym and pilates to build up my core and upper-body strength and then we'll revisit this later in the year!

Unnatural movement

At 11am, I got the call from Christine (well to be honest, it was actually an SMS) - "Hey Mallymoodle, do you want to go ice-skating today?" Being curious and foolhardy (hi Arthur!) the answer was of course, "Sure why not?" I took Tram 27 to Petuelring and then walked over to the Olympiapark and the Eissportzentrum. 


It was such a nice (albeit cool) day that I took some photos.

I'm not the only person strolling!

So peaceful looking with the trees and lake.

Looking towards the Olympiaturm. I might have to be a tourist and go up it one day.

Inside the Eissportzentrum, I rented a pair of skates, met up with Christine and got on with it while trying not to remember stories of people who had fallen on the ice and died or had near death experiences. 

Skates on!



Other people doing their thing.

Christina was ready to teach me how to skate...

and then later palmed off to her husband, whose hand in a deathgrip as he advised me on technique.

Oh look, I'm skating!!! 

Well not the most comfortable hour and half I'd ever spent, I managed to fall only twice! Once when my skate hit a hole in the ice and the second not long after the first fall, probably because I was forcing myself too much. I'm not sure if this falls within Sport of the Year category but it was definitely something I'd never EVER done before and I will probably try again this year to master!

World Cup report

What can I say about the FIFA World Cup? This may sound horribly unpatriotic of me, but as much as I cheered and smiled when my country won, I can't seem to make myself really, really, REALLY support them. When I watch them play and then compare them to a silky team like Brazil or Spain...I can't help but hope that we're not the team who gets killed 8-0, because you know there's a team who is killed every tournament.

I also hate the way the games dont start here until 11:30pm - it means I feel like !@$#% when i crawl into the lab after only a few hours sleep.

What else do I hate about it? Well, I hate how tense watching the games make me. I mean, on one hand its good because I'm really into it! But I also hate it because they stress me out bigtime. Watching England v. Paraguay with my Mum...every approach, every missed shot, it was like being stabbed with swords of frustration and fear!

Good things about the World Cup! Well, apart from the fact the men are hot (although some of them tend to be quite ugly - e.g. Ronaldinho, Wayne Rooney), I love the outpouring of manlove in their post goal/match celebrations such as in the photo below:There's nothing quite like playing *stacks on* to show enthusiasm, something the Italians have in abundance. And the Dutch as well - such a romantic embrace...

And of course, I find a lot of amusement in the antics of the fans. All that make up, costumes etc...but what I really enjoy are the chants! Hundreds of ppl chanting the same thing simultaneously. They're often quite funny in a biting way that can double as social commentary! Like the way the Australians chanted *You only sing when you're whaling* to the Japanese after their 3-1 win. Hilarious!

So that's my round-up for now. So much sport this year....

Resolutions for 2009

Well lets outline what I'm going to try and do this year...

• Take a leaf out of Kahuna's book and try to be more patient with people.
• Having said that, it has been suggested to me that I should also cut loose some deadweight friends. I may also try to do that.
• Reduce my drinking (again). I think last year was a sign that I'm getting too old for that stuff. The spirit is still willing, but forgetting to balance every alcoholic drink with a glass of water means that my flesh ends up weak.
• My new sport of the year will be dancing. I don't know what type of dancing yet. but Suboo wants to take lessons in salsa. Bring it on!
• Submit/Finish my PhD by September, and of course for old times' sake
• Lose 5kg. I probably should amend that to about 2kg, but hey, I never do it anyway!

So here's to a successful year! *clinks champagne glass*