I thought I had finally achieved a “healthy” sleeping schedule when I would wake up every morning at 9 all by myself, but little did I know that my old habits would soon catch up with me. I started sleeping more at 2 am and this resulted in me waking up half way throughout the day and then proceeding to wasting the whole day away… Anyways, c’est ma vie.

On one sunny and not-so-cold day, I went around looking for an instrument shop because I didn’t bring my ukulele here with me so I was deeply missing the sound of a string instrument. On my way there, I took a few wrong turns but managed to find my way. Those wrong turns sure were serendipitous because I saw some amazing buildings and even a bit of what Chinatown in Melbourne has to offer.

This is just one of the buildings of RMIT, an institute of technology, famous for their design and architecture faculty. Now I know why…

And another. (I do not think my camera produced the illusion in the photo)

So when I finally found the instrument store, I was bewildered by this wall of colourful ukuleles. Can you guess which one I decided to go with? 🙂

So my local friends decided to take me and their few other friends to a restaurant owned by one of the Australian Masterchefs: Huxtaburger. Needless to say, expectations were MET. It was filthy, greasy, but wonderfully delicious and lip-smacking. I went with the Denise burger that featured a more spicy taste because if you know me, I always enjoy an extra bit of spice in my life. We also got some of their famous Chipotle fries to share. I am definitely going back there another time.

I’ve been wanting to try a ginger beer ever since I got here and we finally found one at Huxtabuger. I can’t say I enjoy the flavour but it was definitely something I needed to try. It was far too ginger-y for me haha and not enough soda! I think I’ll just stick to ginger ales…

This was just the beginning/main course of the dinner. As for desserts, he proceeded to take us to a restaurant owned by another Masterchef: Hellenic Republic. It’s a Greek restaurant so of course, the desserts were Greek and as much as I want to talk about how much I loved it, I simply cannot. They were too sweet for my liking but Greek desserts are known to be exceptionally sweet. Nonetheless, the presentation and the flavour were definitely interesting and new to my taste buds. I shall get more accustomed and maybe then will I begin to love it. But something in the restaurant did catch my eye, a quotation hanging from the ceiling.

“A food experience is not about filling the stomach, it’s about warming the heart and filling the soul”.

This was the Greek donuts that resembled a lot like Timbits from Tim Hortons (how Canadian of me), except much sweeter and covered in syrup. Drool.

I decided to try the Baklava because I’ve never had one and was intrigued. It was definitely way too nutty and sweet for my liking. Is it supposed to be like this lol?

This was the big dessert of the night that I was dying to try. To my surprise, it was not what I expected it to be at all! The taste was exquisite and hard to explain but it was definitely something I’ve never tried before. The scoop of ice cream on top was rosewater flavoured and certainly an acquired taste (that I’m not used to… yet). But overall, it was something super interesting to try.

I’ve saved the best for last: Pistachio rice pudding. The one that was the most delicious and certainly had the right amount of nuts to sugar ratio to make it the most favourable! Yummy and even though we shared these 4 desserts, I was certainly full with a food baby on its way.

The waitress later gave us our bill under this cute little stone, can anyone guess how to pronounce the word? 🙂

The weirdest thing I’ve found here is that they try so hard to make McDonald’s classy. First of all, MCD is called “Macca’s” here and I don’t even know why. Second of all, at some locations they have a separate side just for McCafe, selling coffee and pastries. And guess what? They sell macarons at McCafes and those macarons cost more than the actual macaron stores found in Montreal. SO STRANGE. Here’s a photo to prove it all.

That tiny thing cost me $2 but surprisingly, it tasted quite good for macarons from MCD. It was raspberry flavoured. :3

So this week was quite short because of my inability to wake up from long, deep sleeps. But on the Sunday, I decided to be less anti-social and respond to the other students in the exchange group to meet up and hang out. I never done this earlier during the weeks because I assumed that once school starts, it’ll be just as easy in making friends. Whatever, I was being a little naive and anti-social. Anywho, being the artsy-fartsy city Melbourne is, we have a lot of art things going on all the time. This girl suggested we meet up and goto this art projection thing going on around the city. It was a cold night but I thought, Joy, it’s time to make friends.  There were actually quite a few people who decided to meet up and walk around the city cold at night to look at art projected onto buildings/walls/stores near this “hipster” part of town. It was quite fun despite the cold and I met some awesome people from all over the world! I’m actually glad that I met people on this day or else I would have no one to talk to the days after because it seemed like a lot of people have already met each other from this Melbourne Welcome thing that I opted out of. Glad being less anti-social helped!

On our way to the art projections, we saw a possum! They resemble so much of squirrels back home, which by the way cannot be found in Australia. But these things look way more vicious than the cute, little squirrels back home.

We then decided to get some food at this quaint little bar called Bimbo Deluxe. Kudos to the designer/eye behind designing the place to be one of the chillest, most coolest place I’ve ever seen. There’s a patio up stairs that lack a roof but has lights hanging all over and you can actually see the moon from there.

What’s even cooler are the $4 pizzas there, delicious! I went with this cajun chicken, cheese, and spicy + sweet mango sauce. Man, was the pizza worth every dollar. The picture does not do it justice but I was eating in the dark anyway so I had no idea what I was eating.

What I love about the art scene in Melbourne is that it’s so active and so lively, we saw people singing on the streets to each other, although it was a bit creepy. There were free popcorn, pop up art studios to take part of, and much more endless adventures!

Here’s some popcorn to salute the end this week of laziness and the beginning of an incredible time in Melbourne.

Cheers!