I take my hat off to you

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sarahhottinger

Tuesday, 4 December 2012

so long and thanks for all the fish

I've been longing to start over with blogging once I graduate, so check out my new blog:
The Stoic Peach. I won't be deleting this blog merely for personal nostalgic purposes or for looking back and laughing at myself. Thank you for following and reading this blog all this time. Hope you enjoy the new one!

Sunday, 4 November 2012

the beginning of the end

DISCLAIMER: Not really a disclaimer. I know this looks wordy but please read all the way through.

Picture this: me standing at the edge of a pool swimming with sharks and being forced to swim to the other side to win $1,000,000. That's me right now. I cannot begin to describe the fear and excitement that is accumulating as I type this. The former because my International Baccalaureate finals exams begin tomorrow and the latter because that means I am one step closer to getting out of this place! I am currently on call with Max, trying to calm her down while I pretend I am not having a stroke because seriously, this is the beginning of the end of High School and next year I have to face what QUT defines as 'the real world'.

To all those who begin the IB exams tomorrow, I wish you the bestest of luck a person can wish to anyone. You will be fine, and I'm not saying this because I feel obliged to or because I have to make you feel a sense of security, but because you will genuinely be fine. Remember, if you don't get into what you want, there are so many ways of going around it and getting there.

Last few tips:

Make sure you read the instructions properly:

Max's mum told me that in Zimbabwe for a finals exam (I have no idea why), they were asked to write a day of their life in a dairy and all the students skimmed and read it as 'diary', so that was what they wrote. God help them.

Drink a cup of tea or a stimulant before you leave for an exam:

This will guarantee that you won't fall asleep in the exam and will have an alert mind

Remember some complex and funky adjectives you can use in your exam:

Fun fact: corpulent is the formal word for fat

Max told me this and it worked great: if you're tired, drink a cup of coffee before you nap then set your alarm for 30 minutes and you will wake up just as the effect of the caffeine kicks in.

Never ever nap for more than one hour because you will wake feeling groggy and tired and won't be able to refocus properly for a few hours as your body will fight to keep you in REM (sleep) mode

Lastly, try not to change your routine or stick to a routine you know well so that you won't freak yourself out and feel disorganised.

Here are a few chapters in the bible I recommend for those who are anxious/scared to read:

Psalm 46

Psalm 91

Hebrews 11 (my favourite)

Goodluck to all of you and screw the 'may you get what you truly deserve', because each and everyone of you deserve the best.

Wednesday, 31 October 2012

Monday, morning session, 8am

Esther just sent me this:
November preparations are underway - 4 days and 5 hours till finals...

Sunday, 7 October 2012

the last spring holidays of high school

Bonjour mes amis!

So the first week of holidays involved two days of study, three days of intensive chemistry workshop, a day of relaxing, and a day of church. This week, Monday and Tuesday were spent at maths workshop, Wednesday was spent eating and going to the 'Brisbane Asian Soccer Finals' or something like that. Thursday was Tony's birthday BBQ dinner, Friday was Esther and Elizabeth's birthday cruise dinner and Saturday was spent studying and then Francis' at the Gold Coast at night with youth. Blah, that was a huge chunky sentence. But a riveting set of holidays, really!

~~Since I always eat at the Jetty, there's not really a point of me posting the 100th photo of oysters from there on here~~. YOLO here's a photo of the oysters:

Mitchell owed me big time for turning up over two hours late to meeting me for lunch, and so bought me dessert. 'Twas pretty good!

L-R: Tonka bean pannacotta, passionfruit ice cream, almond dentelle and pear tarte tatin, salted almond ice cream, cardomon caramel.

An ootd photo, kind of.

I tried to hide from the photo but when I turned around BAM some guy took it. Fml.

Honestly, the photos were all quite repetitive so this is the funniest photo I could find. Funny in the sense that whenever Angus needed it, he'd clap his hands twice and call out "Patrick!" who would come running with the water bottle. Most efficient and on-hand water boy I've ever seen. Angus stayed in position for the whole game. Like, when we asked him why he wasn't doing anything his reply was "I'm conserving!" He was the only player with his own personal water-boy, and I think he 'conserved' throughout the whole game until the last five minutes.

Our seats. I think we made the most noise out of everyone. The BGS support team/cheering squad weren't even cheering :|

Needless to say, the non-BGS team, Brisbane Miracle, I think they're called, won with a score of 2-1!

It's sort of a tradition for our family and our only other cousins in Queensland to go out as two families for each child's birthday. Friday night, we celebrated Esther and Elizabeth's birthday!

On the drive to Marina's Mirage (HEY LAZY EYE HOW YOU DOIN')!

Before boarding the ship: My sister, Beck, and one of my cousin's whose birthday it was, Elizabeth

"Hello from on board!" cried Esther the birthday girl, as she excitedly peered around the ship.

The girls of the two families.

Parents on the top deck.

Pretty decent for a shotty DSLR and kit lens, I think.

The buffet.

The other half of the buffet.

Dude. That huge bucket of oysters got refilled every 10 minutes, I'm telling you, I ate 50+ oysters to my heart's content. Which was followed by a stupid move of going up to the top deck for fresh air. I could have vomitted enough to feed all the fish in the sea. Thank God I didn't.

Hay.

Brother gave up after his first dish of looking normal and followed it up with THREE WHOLE PLATES full of oysters.

Sister told me to take this picture. Damn girl!

Top deck once again! We walked up there in between servings to let our food digest quicker - bad idea, actually...

Esther's card, Elizabeth's card. I am a pro card picker.

REALLY CUTE OLD COUPLE WERE DOING THE CHICKEN DANCE. But I don't have a photo.

Chocolate mousse in funky martini glasses.

Elizabeth and Beck

Daughters and Mum

Esther and her Mum (awww!)

Cousin's family. I love each and every one of them to bits, you don't understand.

Our family!

Hair got greasy and disgusting so I tied it up.

And folks, this is why I never tie my hair up. I know y'all are shuddering!

Leaving the ship and it's wonderful music and food and people :( we drove to Surfer's and chilled around for a bit before heading home.

Slept over cousin's house and this is Elizabeth's wombat collection. She's obsessed with wombats, as you could have - actually, probably, definitely not have - deduced from the wombat card I chose for her.

And now might be a good time to say that I don't have any photos from Tony's. Incidentally, Vivek happened to upload a whole album of 159ish photos from the party onto our Seniors 2012 page (also known as Graphs Taking Form). It was like a two mile scroll to the end of the photos.

And here's a photo of a steak sandwich I made to separate these two giant chunks of writing. Steak sandwich with lettuce, mushrooms, onions and blue cheese!

I just got back from the Gold Coast with youth after spending the evening at Francis' doing bible trivia and having a BBQ. Nhi and Trang are over right now for a sleepover and I am off to make some instanoodles! Hope y'all enjoy your Sunday tomorrow. Monday is going to be heccers. xxx

Wednesday, 3 October 2012

And for everything else

I have been MIA for the past two months due to mock exams. Finals exams are in 1 month, 1 day 23 hours 24 minutes and counting! THIS IS SO SCARY MY LIFE IS ENDING IN well actually, what life hahahahahaha.....

The last day of school was spent at the Grammar pre Cindy went to and the Grammar post. Here are some photos for y'all to look at:

Um, this photo won't rotate :| so.... enjoy?

I actually think this would have been one of the most depressing days I've ever experienced. As the pre drew to a close, Lily received an email saying UMAT results had been released. Walked back to Tina's house and then sat there all quiet. Tina opened her UMAT results first. Then me. We both cried pretty intensely. But boy am I glad Elaine, Yu Huan, Lily and Tina were there and I'm pretty damn glad I opened it at Tina's. They comforted me and so we left for dinner with Mitchell. I went pretty crazy, actually. I think I called up almost everyone in my contacts list that wouldn't care if I ranted or was crying or sobbing or not. MOVING ON... Oh, and ew, a giant lump of text in really weird font - how unattractive.

Dinner was at Sardine Tin and dessert was at Piaf. I'm not quite sure what we ordered because I was a bit delirious I am exaggerating quite a bit about my delirium but yes, it was a scary night.

My steak sandwich (which wasn't that great because the steak was really chewy) was shaped as a heart. A broken one. That restaurant is psychic.

Mitchell ordered tea at Piaf and this is the cutest milk bottle in the world.

I advise everyone to try Piaf's creme brulee. It. Is. So. Good.

Seed/100

We have so much in common, it's crazy. And I thought I was alone!

I apologise sincerely for the structure of the following parts. So here is just me trying to make up for my lack of updates by posting random photos that I've taken in the past two months where I haven't blogged.

I baked a chocolate fudge mud cake and being stupid me, I used frozen raspberries on the top. Which hadn't thawed yet. So then this happened, and yeah, sad story.

Made a really nice dinner.

Father's day breakfast for Dad.

Apologies to Julie as I recount this but:

On the way to school one morning, instead of walking around the school, Julie decided to take the giant 2m fence behind the school in front of the creek and scale it with Nathan. Nathan, being the tank, was over in a jiffy. Julie, however, climbed to the top and started shaking and freaking out and all Nathan could do was say, 'you can do it, you'll be fine' etc. She jumps down and Nathan turns around and has a heart attack. Nathan, for those of you who don't know, is one of those guys who are really sweet, considerate etc. but not used to this kind of thing. Turns out Julie's skirt ripped COMPLETELY in half and got stuck on the top of the fence as she jumped down. She tells the story so much better than I do. IT'S FUNNY I SWEAR IT IS!

Food. Nice healthyish food.

MY SISTER'S BIRTHDAY. Celebrated it at home with our family and our cousins. Twas great.

Riya and I went absolutely insane because we had three years worth of chemistry AND biology to study. Yes, for those of you who don't know, our finals exams test us on the syllabus which covers 3 years content of each subject, for all our subjects. HOW EXCITING!!!!

Kimono thing I resided in for about two weeks.

Made blood and guts potatoes and capery salad. Also made pizza dough for the first time yesterday, it tastes amazing!

I LOVE COCONUT JUICE.

This post is getting more and more irrelevant as I go down. I'm going to regret this in the morning. Oh well! Will blog about Caroline's in the next post.

HAVE A LOVELY WEDNESDAY TOMORROW! Ciao!

sarahhottinger
	Tuesday, 4 December 2012 so long and thanks for all the fish I've been longing to start over with blogging once I graduate, so check out my new blog: The Stoic Peach. I won't be deleting this blog merely for personal nostalgic purposes or for looking back and laughing at myself. Thank you for following and reading this blog all this time. Hope you enjoy the new one! Sunday, 4 November 2012 the beginning of the end DISCLAIMER: Not really a disclaimer. I know this looks wordy but please read all the way through. Picture this: me standing at the edge of a pool swimming with sharks and being forced to swim to the other side to win $1,000,000. That's me right now. I cannot begin to describe the fear and excitement that is accumulating as I type this. The former because my International Baccalaureate finals exams begin tomorrow and the latter because that means I am one step closer to getting out of this place! I am currently on call with Max, trying to calm her down while I pretend I am not having a stroke because seriously, this is the beginning of the end of High School and next year I have to face what QUT defines as 'the real world'. To all those who begin the IB exams tomorrow, I wish you the bestest of luck a person can wish to anyone. You will be fine, and I'm not saying this because I feel obliged to or because I have to make you feel a sense of security, but because you will genuinely be fine. Remember, if you don't get into what you want, there are so many ways of going around it and getting there. Last few tips: Make sure you read the instructions properly: Max's mum told me that in Zimbabwe for a finals exam (I have no idea why), they were asked to write a day of their life in a dairy and all the students skimmed and read it as 'diary', so that was what they wrote. God help them. Drink a cup of tea or a stimulant before you leave for an exam: This will guarantee that you won't fall asleep in the exam and will have an alert mind Remember some complex and funky adjectives you can use in your exam: Fun fact: corpulent is the formal word for fat Max told me this and it worked great: if you're tired, drink a cup of coffee before you nap then set your alarm for 30 minutes and you will wake up just as the effect of the caffeine kicks in. Never ever nap for more than one hour because you will wake feeling groggy and tired and won't be able to refocus properly for a few hours as your body will fight to keep you in REM (sleep) mode Lastly, try not to change your routine or stick to a routine you know well so that you won't freak yourself out and feel disorganised. Here are a few chapters in the bible I recommend for those who are anxious/scared to read: Psalm 46 Psalm 91 Hebrews 11 (my favourite) Goodluck to all of you and screw the 'may you get what you truly deserve', because each and everyone of you deserve the best. Wednesday, 31 October 2012 Monday, morning session, 8am Esther just sent me this: November preparations are underway - 4 days and 5 hours till finals... Sunday, 7 October 2012 the last spring holidays of high school Bonjour mes amis! So the first week of holidays involved two days of study, three days of intensive chemistry workshop, a day of relaxing, and a day of church. This week, Monday and Tuesday were spent at maths workshop, Wednesday was spent eating and going to the 'Brisbane Asian Soccer Finals' or something like that. Thursday was Tony's birthday BBQ dinner, Friday was Esther and Elizabeth's birthday cruise dinner and Saturday was spent studying and then Francis' at the Gold Coast at night with youth. Blah, that was a huge chunky sentence. But a riveting set of holidays, really! ~~Since I always eat at the Jetty, there's not really a point of me posting the 100th photo of oysters from there on here~~. YOLO here's a photo of the oysters: Mitchell owed me big time for turning up over two hours late to meeting me for lunch, and so bought me dessert. 'Twas pretty good! L-R: Tonka bean pannacotta, passionfruit ice cream, almond dentelle and pear tarte tatin, salted almond ice cream, cardomon caramel. An ootd photo, kind of. I tried to hide from the photo but when I turned around BAM some guy took it. Fml. Honestly, the photos were all quite repetitive so this is the funniest photo I could find. Funny in the sense that whenever Angus needed it, he'd clap his hands twice and call out "Patrick!" who would come running with the water bottle. Most efficient and on-hand water boy I've ever seen. Angus stayed in position for the whole game. Like, when we asked him why he wasn't doing anything his reply was "I'm conserving!" He was the only player with his own personal water-boy, and I think he 'conserved' throughout the whole game until the last five minutes. Our seats. I think we made the most noise out of everyone. The BGS support team/cheering squad weren't even cheering :\| Needless to say, the non-BGS team, Brisbane Miracle, I think they're called, won with a score of 2-1! It's sort of a tradition for our family and our only other cousins in Queensland to go out as two families for each child's birthday. Friday night, we celebrated Esther and Elizabeth's birthday! On the drive to Marina's Mirage (HEY LAZY EYE HOW YOU DOIN')! Before boarding the ship: My sister, Beck, and one of my cousin's whose birthday it was, Elizabeth "Hello from on board!" cried Esther the birthday girl, as she excitedly peered around the ship. The girls of the two families. Parents on the top deck. Pretty decent for a shotty DSLR and kit lens, I think. The buffet. The other half of the buffet. Dude. That huge bucket of oysters got refilled every 10 minutes, I'm telling you, I ate 50+ oysters to my heart's content. Which was followed by a stupid move of going up to the top deck for fresh air. I could have vomitted enough to feed all the fish in the sea. Thank God I didn't. Hay. Brother gave up after his first dish of looking normal and followed it up with THREE WHOLE PLATES full of oysters. Sister told me to take this picture. Damn girl! Top deck once again! We walked up there in between servings to let our food digest quicker - bad idea, actually... Esther's card, Elizabeth's card. I am a pro card picker. REALLY CUTE OLD COUPLE WERE DOING THE CHICKEN DANCE. But I don't have a photo. Chocolate mousse in funky martini glasses. Elizabeth and Beck Daughters and Mum Esther and her Mum (awww!) Cousin's family. I love each and every one of them to bits, you don't understand. Our family! Hair got greasy and disgusting so I tied it up. And folks, this is why I never tie my hair up. I know y'all are shuddering! Leaving the ship and it's wonderful music and food and people :( we drove to Surfer's and chilled around for a bit before heading home. Slept over cousin's house and this is Elizabeth's wombat collection. She's obsessed with wombats, as you could have - actually, probably, definitely not have - deduced from the wombat card I chose for her. And now might be a good time to say that I don't have any photos from Tony's. Incidentally, Vivek happened to upload a whole album of 159ish photos from the party onto our Seniors 2012 page (also known as Graphs Taking Form). It was like a two mile scroll to the end of the photos. And here's a photo of a steak sandwich I made to separate these two giant chunks of writing. Steak sandwich with lettuce, mushrooms, onions and blue cheese! I just got back from the Gold Coast with youth after spending the evening at Francis' doing bible trivia and having a BBQ. Nhi and Trang are over right now for a sleepover and I am off to make some instanoodles! Hope y'all enjoy your Sunday tomorrow. Monday is going to be heccers. xxx Wednesday, 3 October 2012 And for everything else I have been MIA for the past two months due to mock exams. Finals exams are in 1 month, 1 day 23 hours 24 minutes and counting! THIS IS SO SCARY MY LIFE IS ENDING IN well actually, what life hahahahahaha..... The last day of school was spent at the Grammar pre Cindy went to and the Grammar post. Here are some photos for y'all to look at: Um, this photo won't rotate :\| so.... enjoy? I actually think this would have been one of the most depressing days I've ever experienced. As the pre drew to a close, Lily received an email saying UMAT results had been released. Walked back to Tina's house and then sat there all quiet. Tina opened her UMAT results first. Then me. We both cried pretty intensely. But boy am I glad Elaine, Yu Huan, Lily and Tina were there and I'm pretty damn glad I opened it at Tina's. They comforted me and so we left for dinner with Mitchell. I went pretty crazy, actually. I think I called up almost everyone in my contacts list that wouldn't care if I ranted or was crying or sobbing or not. MOVING ON... Oh, and ew, a giant lump of text in really weird font - how unattractive. Dinner was at Sardine Tin and dessert was at Piaf. I'm not quite sure what we ordered because I was a bit delirious I am exaggerating quite a bit about my delirium but yes, it was a scary night. My steak sandwich (which wasn't that great because the steak was really chewy) was shaped as a heart. A broken one. That restaurant is psychic. Mitchell ordered tea at Piaf and this is the cutest milk bottle in the world. I advise everyone to try Piaf's creme brulee. It. Is. So. Good. Seed/100 We have so much in common, it's crazy. And I thought I was alone! I apologise sincerely for the structure of the following parts. So here is just me trying to make up for my lack of updates by posting random photos that I've taken in the past two months where I haven't blogged. I baked a chocolate fudge mud cake and being stupid me, I used frozen raspberries on the top. Which hadn't thawed yet. So then this happened, and yeah, sad story. Made a really nice dinner. Father's day breakfast for Dad. Apologies to Julie as I recount this but: On the way to school one morning, instead of walking around the school, Julie decided to take the giant 2m fence behind the school in front of the creek and scale it with Nathan. Nathan, being the tank, was over in a jiffy. Julie, however, climbed to the top and started shaking and freaking out and all Nathan could do was say, 'you can do it, you'll be fine' etc. She jumps down and Nathan turns around and has a heart attack. Nathan, for those of you who don't know, is one of those guys who are really sweet, considerate etc. but not used to this kind of thing. Turns out Julie's skirt ripped COMPLETELY in half and got stuck on the top of the fence as she jumped down. She tells the story so much better than I do. IT'S FUNNY I SWEAR IT IS! Food. Nice healthyish food. MY SISTER'S BIRTHDAY. Celebrated it at home with our family and our cousins. Twas great. Riya and I went absolutely insane because we had three years worth of chemistry AND biology to study. Yes, for those of you who don't know, our finals exams test us on the syllabus which covers 3 years content of each subject, for all our subjects. HOW EXCITING!!!! Kimono thing I resided in for about two weeks. Made blood and guts potatoes and capery salad. Also made pizza dough for the first time yesterday, it tastes amazing! I LOVE COCONUT JUICE. This post is getting more and more irrelevant as I go down. I'm going to regret this in the morning. Oh well! Will blog about Caroline's in the next post. HAVE A LOVELY WEDNESDAY TOMORROW! Ciao!