A piece of sound advice from Anna:
Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.
-Frederic Chopin

I find this particularly meaningful. This quote is generally about practice - if you leave the difficult parts out and not work on them, these parts would affect the structure and quality of your piece. But if you work on the little bits, yet look at your piece(s) in a bigger perspective, you tend to improve the quality of your piece heaps more.

It's really cool that I can get sound advice from an amazing piano teacher (who's a concert pianist too) and an absolutely wonderful tutor (who's a professional cellist).

The picture of Jessie, shown above, was taken last year, when I went to Steph's place (Warragul) in the summer. Jessie's really cool, and she's pretty friendly. Though she was shy at first, and rather apprehensive of us. She warmed up a tiny bit though.

During Easter break, we went to Warragul again, but this time, we had lunch outside the town - in a vineyard-cum-restaurant. And there we go! Pictures of the vineyard and the surrounding countryside. It was really peaceful and a little chilly, coz it was raining on and off. But lunch was definitely awesome!!!!

The portions were rather small, so we ordered around 6 dishes, of which a few are shown here:

Meatballs with chilli sauce and a chilli padi on top - we split the chilli padi into 3 and ate it up. It was absolutely awesome! And of course, the meatballs were equally good...

A different kind of meatballs (I think this is beef) in different sauce.

Fried chicken - coz we couldn't have everything spicy...

And of course, the dessert! We split the dessert of course. The first one consists of chocolate souffle with melted chocolate sauce in it, together with whipped cream in the foreground and chocolate powder as garnishing.

And of course, we couldn't resist the Spanish tapas (doughnuts) coated with sugar and (potentially) drenched with chocolate sauce...

Back to Warragul we went, and here are some pictures of Jessie in her favourite spot. She just sat there, sedentary, and refused to come out. Though she was rather calm.

Steph's nana's cat: Phoebe. She's a Burmese, has absolutely beautiful fur - which gives her a fluffy appearance of course, but her attitude and social skills....nah, I shan't mention it here.

Besides going to Steph's place for a night, I was also involved in some excessive piano-ing and excessive harpsichord-ing. Scales, arpeggios, Bach's Prelude and Fugues, you name it. Anything technical. The harpsichord actually went really, really out of tune and I couldn't play on it today. It's pretty hard to get a harpsichord which is tuned as well as a piano...for some reason. Hopefully it'll be tuned soon.

And on that note, stay tuned for the next post! Will be "Bach"!!!!!!

The 4 pictures above were taken from Williamstown Beach, about 5 minutes away from the train station.

We did not get to go to that area on Sunday's visit, though we did manage to visit the pier, where there were heaps of privately-owned sailboats and expensive houses overlooking the bay. There were also many shops (especially food) located away from the housing area. This area is known as The Strand, and according to one of our family friends, some of the houses cost a bomb. You get what I mean from the 2nd picture above.

The pictures below were mostly stuff we saw along the street to my aunt's place, as well as some snapshots of The Strand, minus the expensive houses of course.

A dandelion on the roadside, on the way to my aunt's place. We actually pulled it out of the ground and blew those white bits away. And as you can see, the wind has actually blown some of its white bits away.

Roses outside my aunt's house. My aunt doesn't trim them often, and so we often see them in full bloom. There're heaps more roses around...especially white and yellow roses, and they bloom really, really beautifully in cold weather, somehow.

We spotted this giant hibiscus bush with equally large hibiscus flowers in full bloom outside one of the houses. Although the garden wasn't very well kept, the hibiscus bush was growing fairly well.

Mother and son chillin' by the bay with their 2 dogs...

And there we go! The privately-owned sailboats, and a plane landing on water in the foreground.

My friend's bear collection. She really, really loves teddy bears, and has heaps of them...

More flowers...these're pretty interesting too, actually.

Awesome gelati store near the bay. We actually chilled out along the bay for a while, before

heading to the shops to get some stuff.

This was taken outside the church, on our way back to my aunt's place.

And yeah, that's about all for now! I really hope to go to Williamstown Beach and snap more pictures. I never get tired of the place...and hopefully there won't be any jellyfish..last year there were heaps of jellyfish (moon jellyfish I think) swimming towards the coast and drowning of course. Hopefully jellyfish suicide season is over.

Anyways, stay tuned for the next post! Thanks heaps for reading! :)

Yesterday: I had chocolate tapas (Spanish doughnuts) with a fellow musician, Steph, at Chocolateria San Churro. The Chocolateria is somewhere near I stay, and we dropped by partially because another chocolateria was closed. The chocolate tapas were absolutely awesome...and to add on to the sugar rush, I had white hot chocolate. It's pretty interesting, actually, but it was really, really sweet. And I did have a sugar

This post isn't going to be a very long post, as I've to get back to my psychology assignment as fast as possible. So yeah, here are some trinkets I took about a week ago. These pictures are pretty random, actually. But they're taken partially coz I haven't been doing still-life studio shots in a while. The last time I did good still-life shots was about a year ago, I think.


Earrings on the wooden mushroom I bought from Salamanca Market (Hobart) last year...

My "secret zodiac friend" with the piano Steph got me for Christmas last year. According to the Chinese zodiac, the horse has the goat as a secret friend...so yeah...Mum (being a strong believer in that) got me this golden guy, and he's been watching over me ever since.

Here's the gorgeous bird that another buddy, Ben, got me last year for Christmas. Currently it's sitting on top of my drawer set, with the grand piano of course.

More shots of the goat with the mushroom and the piano.

That's about all, I guess. My psychology assignment is "calling" for me now....!!!!! Stay tuned for the next post yeah? Cheers and happy Easter!!!!!

Before I start, this post is dedicated to Granny, who left for Heaven on 2 April 2006. I miss her heaps, especially the awkward moments where I didn't understand her Hokkien and she didn't understand my English, the moments where we watched TV and laughed treacherously at the slightest thing, the moments where she brought me to kindy when I was very young, and of course, the moments where she brought me up.........the list goes on and on.

So yeah, I'm dedicating this post to my smiley, fun-loving and awesome Granny, who'll always be laughing down from the heavens above and spreading her happiness to us...

I'll always miss you, Granny...

These photos were taken about a week before I left for Melbourne - we actually planned an early birthday celebration for my mum's supervisor, as his birthday was a day before I left. The restaurant we went to (Halia) was really posh, and really near the Chopin sculpture I mentioned before.

So yeah...

This flower was taken outside the restaurant, and it sort of resembles the logo of the restaurant - as shown in the picture below the flower...the ambience is really awesome coz of the quietness of the gardens surrounding it...

And of course, alcohol is involved. But this is good alcohol.....!!!! In fact, it's one of the best wines I've ever tasted.

Buns as appetisers. I kept asking for buns (4 in total) coz they were just so fresh and fluffy. And I ordered mushroom soup to go with it:

Dad had seafood as usual - he's a pretty big fan of seafood, like Italian Zuppa - tomato soup with mussels and clams. It's pretty good, actually...

I reckon this is my brother's main course. The portions aren't big, but it's enough to fill our stomachs.

I reckon this is mum's supervisor's main course...

And this is mine. I happened to be craving for rice (again) that day, although I've been having rice everyday at home. Somehow I just cannot live without rice. So yeah, I had a fish and mushroom set - which came with Japanese rice:

And of course, desserts. This one here looks extremely sweet......I wonder if the person had a sugar rush after that...

And this is mine. It took about 15 minutes to prepare, but it was definitely worth the wait. Especially the chocolate thingy filled with hot, melted chocolate. So good!!!!!!

Mum ordered the same dessert for her supervisor - except that it had better finishing touches, and of course, a birthday greeting...written in chocolate. Eventually we licked the chocolate up, leaving the word "Happy" on the plate....

And on that note...I'd better go for dinner now. Uploading these photos has made me very, very, very hungry...

And once again, I miss you, Granny!!!!

Stay tuned for the next post!