SY's Colourful diary，彩色日记

I am an absent minded person, I easily forgot things that are just happened to me. But I have a very good memory if I want to remember certain thing. Since I am so absent minded, I always remind myself to double check things that I have done.

When I was in Malaysia, I always walk back to my car to double check whether I had locked the car. Same thing happens in Canada, where I do not have a car but I own a room.

Some interesting cases happened on me. One of them is quite funny and I remembered it so well. It was happened in 3 years ago, I went to Canadian HICOM in Malaysia to apply visitor visa, I left the building and went to a travel agency. When I was there, I found that my handbag was not with me and it was not in my car too. There were importance ID in my handbag such as passport, IC and driving lisence. I was so lost and I quickly rush back to the Canadian HICOM. The 2 places are quite a distance away, I took 5 minutes drive to reach there. I was so lucky that I FOUND my bag at the car park lot. It was a dark parking lot, and my bag was in black too. Nobody has notice it in 20 mintues time.

2nd funny thing was my car key. I like to put my things everywhere such as wallet, handphone and car key. My family always blame me when a car key was lost. This happens all the time until we do not want to find it because we know that it will appear again sooner or later. However, there was a time, when the key was disappear for more than 2 months. So we doubt that it lost in someway but not at home. My mum went to duplicate a new key for the lock of the car, and changed the lock system. It costs Rm 500. However, the key was found on the next day by our maid.

ok, back to the point. I found that I have lost my student card this morning.Student card is very important to me, because it is a library card. I went all the way to the Science building to get my reserved books, but I was not allowed to do that without a student card. After that, I came back to Pembina Hall for lunch, I was not allowed to enter without a student card too. I went to see the manager, and told her that I lost my card only she allowed me to have lunch there and she was going to deactivat my card. It is because whoever has my card can use it to swipe for food at any food stores in the campus. There are about $ 230 in my student card. She told me to report the lost and get a new card as soon as possible. To get a new card, I have to be fined $16.

I do not report my lost because I think that it is still in my room. I spent 10 minutes looking for it after lunch. My room is small, 10 minutes is really a long time to look for a card. I had looked everywhere, all drawers, clothes and changed my bed sheets, but I could not find it. When I was about to give up, I sat in front of my laptop, I took my laptop up and found that my student card was underneath it.

I got sick of being absent minded, I was wondering if there are any pills can cure this sickness?

Dairy frozen product course. It is a course dealing with ICE CREAM. No doubt that, all our lab sessions are also dealing with ICE CREAM.

I had my first lab session on last Friday. It was so awesome and interesting lab session, where I don't need to bring lab manual, no lab coat is needed but bring our empty stomach into the lab. We were to taste ice creams and score them accordingly.

Before this, I do not know whether the ice cream I eat is in good quality. I would just pick the cheapest ice cream and eat it without any comment. I thought most ice cream taste the same or may be not much differences. After the lab, I learnt that there are many different types of ice cream that available on the market, such as premium fat ice cream, low fat ice cream, No fat ice cream, no sugar added ice cream, double or single churned ice cream. In this lab, we were to taste these ice cream, differentiate them and give them a score in term of their texture and flavor properties.

During the lab, I found that tasting ice cream is not easy as what I thought. There are techniques to taste ice cream. The first mouthful of ice cream tasting its texture, and lecturers asked us to spit it out after a few seconds to feel the texture. The texture is then grading and scoring in terms of crumbly, fluffy, greasy, gummy , icy , sandy, soggy and weak. It sounds more complicated while tasting its flavour. We were given 8 different samples of vanilla. We had to score them in terms of flavoring system ( high flavor, lacks fine flavor, low flavoring, low freshness), sweetness system ( high sweetness, low sweetness), and others like acid, cooked flavor, rancid, salty, whey and unnatural flavor.

we, students just know how to describe the flavoring system and sweetness. But our professor can taste different thing like COOKED flavor- a flavor produced when the food is over heating. He is really an expert in ice cream!!

This is an blind testing ice cream, we do not know which type of ice cream while we tasting it. We are told right after every ice cream were tasted. we had graded the most expensive ice cream with the lowest score. HAHA . It means expensive ice cream is not necessary be good.

My blog today is to give credits to the library services of UOM. There are a lot of libraries in UOM, the nearest one is just 2 minutes walk from my room. But it is the library of Business Faculty. The libraries system is dependent on the internet. Where, we search books online, reserve books online and borrow the books online. At first I found it confusing and annoying at searching books online. I used to find books from shelves to shelves, browsing pages of books and looking at their subtitles in the content page of books before borrowing them. In UOM library, we cant afford to do that, because there are a lot of books and there are in different libraries. I have learnt the library internet access last week, then I found that it is very convenient after all. Where we can search the book by key words,there are a lot of choices for books that contain such key words. Then we can read the full description of a particular book. They listed the subjects and contents of the book too.
We can borrow the books online, we can even choose whichever library to pick up the book. Librarian will send us email when the books are ready to be picked up.
I have borrowed 5 books this week. I hope I can use them for my assignments.

What the life means to us ? Why should we keep studying and working? Is it for future or money ? What is future then ? Future is another stage of "working for money " ? So human's life is all about money ? Let's think about it..

I have been working hard in school, I tried my best to borrow books from library, searching information for doing lab reports, got involve in programs to improve myself, tried to make a lot of friends and so forth. I am thinking why I am doing all these? Is this for future purposes? Yes, indeed. But what is my future? Nobody knows their future, so why shall we start working hard for future before knowing what is our future?

Hehe, Don't worry , I am not mad but these are what I am thinking. If you have any idea, please do share with me.

This is my 3rd week in Winnipeg. I got to know a lot of people, mostly are "HI and Bye" friends. However, I have a few friends who can consider as " close friends" at residence. We usually eat meals together, and teach our own language to one another. They are 2 from Hong Kong, 2 from Korea, and 1 from Japan. The first word we learn in 5 different languages is " stupid ", which is Baka in Japanese, " Brovu" in Korean, "Ben Dan" in mandarin, "Chun Choi" in Cantonese and "Bodoh" in Malay. It was interesting to learn different languages especially Korean. I have difficulty at pronouncing the words although she tried so hard to correct me. So far, I know " araso (do you understand) and Aniohaisayo (hello), Hamzhamida (thank you). My friend laugh at my prounciation, because what I pronounce has a different meaning. The word Pangkapmsida is supposed to be nice to meet you, but I cant pronounce it corretcly and it becomes " I am a potato" , it was so funny.One of the Korean friend likes to play piano too. So we started playing piano together.

It was Ayumi's birthday, but too bad she was not well to celebrate it with us. So I celebrated as Asian's union.

It has been 2 weeks since I moved into this residence room. This is my first room I own alone. I have been sharing a room with my sister since I was born. Sharing a room with somebody is not easy, no matter who is he or she. I have problems while sharing a room with my sister. It is because I am sloppy and my sister is neat. She wants her room neat so she expects me to do it her way. I have a little problem to share a room with my dear, because I don't like to keep things properly. Tolerance is the only Key Word we need to know when sharing a room with someone.

I am pity with one of my friend who is now staying in a double room with a Nigerian. It is because her room mate is not tolerance enough. She wants all the lights off when she sleep even though my friend is not ready to sleep. She always have her friends ( up to 4 in a time) in their room. The most terrible one is she bring guy back to their room, sometime it is at night while my friend is sleeping. After knowing this, I am so happy that I chosen a single room rather than a double room. I am happy to have a private place that entirely own by me, I can do whatever I want without being noticed.

I started keeping an account book to record my daily expenses. I was so shock while I sum up the total of spending for this 2 weeks, it was $ 425. $425 convert back to Ringgit is Rm 1360. It is really a big sum of money!! I spent them mainly on printer, books, and school things. Here are my photos of my room after moving in for 2 weeks. It is very comfortable and cozy, with almost everything that I need. A printer, table lamp, cup , rack and etc.



My bed. I decided not to buy new bed sheet. This bed sheet and bedding are all free for residence students. We can get as many as we want, so why wasting money on them? I have 2 pillows, 3 blankets, a few bed sheets and pillow cases. I don't ever need to wash them I think since I have so many.


My bookshelf. It was very empty when I first moved in. I am happy that I am fully using it now. The bottom part are all the hidden wires, modem, printer and photo frame. Second layer are all my school books and files, 3rd are the printing papers, writing papers and the top is my important document file and FOOD.


My notice board. It was very empty yesterday, so I decided to put something on it to make it less empty. I found a school map, receipt and some bus information then I staple them on the board. It was still empty so I was planning to put my class time table. Today I found some brochures from counters which are colourful and useful, I put them on too. They are Interview tips, Resume and Cover letter Tips and Job Search Tips. And it becomes like this !!! NICE?


My desk. I have a long desk in my room. I like it so much.

I have mentioning The Pembina Hall in my previous blogs. It is a canteen connecting Speechly and Tache residence. I got some pictures of the it from my friends, I would like to show them to you so you guys can imagine and see the place where I eat my meals.

The bar on the left would have cut-fruits like watermelon, melons, grapes, oranges and it is a salad bar too. There are a lot of salad dressings and salad ingredients like lettuce, mushroom, olives and etc.


This part is on the right side of the entrance, which is opposite of the salad bar. There are waffle machine, toaster, jam, butter and etc usually for breakfast on the right side counter. Next to it is a counter that allow us to order food of the day. This counter is usually preparing burger, hot dog, fry eggs, french fries and etc. We have to line up for the order.


There is a mini bar for milk and a rack with all kind of cereals on the left side. There are 3 counters on the right. The first one( most right) is the main dish counter with rice, meat and so on. The second one is pasta counter with pizzas, spaghetti, lasagne and other pasta. The third one is the another counter for us to order food of the day. This counter is for fold over.


This is the dessert bar. It is a long bar with fruits like banana apples and oranges, cakes, muffins. Next to it is one whole row for drinks. ( No pics shown)


This is the place we sit together for our meals. This place is usually fulled at peak hours.


There is another counter is not in these picture. I like this counter the most, it is another counter for us to order food. A cook will usually prepare a sample display on the counter. The cook at this counter usually cook omelet, fry spaghetti with bbq beef, vegetables with rice and etc.

I have a field tour to farmland last saturday. It was a part of my course of agriculture 1. We bought a booklet about the field tour before the day. It consisted 30 over pages, the booklet is debribing and introducing us the destinations and farmland that we are going. I was very excited, there are about 10 destinations stated in the booklet. The farmland include a hog, beef , chicken prodcution plant, a grain and wheat farm, the elevators, a sheep pasture, agriculture research centre,a fruits farm and etc. we were departing at 8am and we expect to be returned at 6pm. I thought I can see and learn a lot of new things in 10 hours of tour.

However, it was very dissappointing. The places we gone are small farms and small producers. I thought we were going to a big plant since we have 130 students. First we arrived at a berries farm. It was boring because it is a berries farm without berries! Then we stopped by at a student's farm, it is a grain storage area with some huge storage bins. After that we stopped at a sheep pasture, research centre and a stupid farm fest. The farm fest was not in our schedule, but we hang out for more than an hour there. There are a small organic farm, counters selling foods and items and some performances. I think the whole trip is a failure, because we did not manage to visit places that in the schedule, and we wasted time at some other stupid places. Besides this, it is a long hours sitting in bus, view the same scenery all the time which is huge, flat lot of field or farmland.

The view of MANITOBA



Grain Storage bins


Horse pasture


Feeding a sheep

The weather had changed significantly since the day I arrived in Winnipeg. The weather nowadays is as low as a single digit degree celcius. It is cold and windy, I like the weather like this the most. Summer had just passed and fall will be end very soon. I grabbed a chance to walk around the campus after my dinner. These are some of the pictures taken during the walk.

Ellis building is belonged to food science faculty. I have my food analysis lecture class here.


This is the Agriculture faculty building. Food Science is under Agriculture faculty. I have my agriculture 1 lecture class heree.




This is the entrance of my residences - Marry Speechly Residence. I stayed on the second floor.


Nice shrub with yellow and red colours leaves, indicating the FALL season.

I found that the people here like to ask the similar questions everyday as a way to start a conversation or as a way of greeting. Two most frequents questions being asked are how are you and how are your classes today ? My answer to these questions is always " ya, pretty good". However, while I am thinking of that now, I asked myself that are my classes good?

I am taking five courses this term, I knew it will be a bit tough since I am a newbie in this school. My courses are Statistic 2, Fundamental of marketing, agriculture 1, food analysis 1 and dairy frozen product. Out of these 5 courses, only 2 are from food science faculty. Ok, I am here to tell you each of them.

Statistic 2= I hate this course very much, because I have totally forgot the thing I learnt from statistic 1, I took statistic 1 in more than a year ago. Another reason is that there are a lot of new and high technology programs are using in this course. First is the webassign program. It is a program allow us to do and pass up our assignment online,it means that the lecturer will upload questions and we have to answer the questions online. However, it is not that easy, we have to type our answer in word form and upload it online. Everyone of us has to pay $16 for using this program. Another program is called JMP6, I am not very sure how to use the program now. I just feel it is very troublesome.

Fundamental of marketing= Well, I attended two classes so far, and I decided to drop the course. It is because I do not like the way of the lecturer teaching. He did not teach according to the syllabus, he talk a lot of thing which I think is "Nonsense", so I have changed to another class which is teaching by another lecturer. Hopefully, this lecturer is fine for me.

Agriculture= Well, I have not much comment for this class, I did not hate it and I do not like it as well. i just found that it is boring.

Food analysis= Ya, I like this class. 1st is because of the lecturer. He is very friendly and good. He gives us all the hangouts of lecture notes. He is very funny while teaching in class. He treated us chocolate on the first day of class !!

Dairy Frozen Product= This is my favorite class ever in this term. The main study for this course is ICE-CREAM. We are going to learn the ingredients, the proses of making it and basically everything related to ICE-Cream. The labs are interesting too. We are going to make ice cream, frozen yogurt and so on.

It is time to go for class now. Hopefully it will be good.

After 2 years of struggling at courses transfer, I am finally a student of University of Manitoba. From the beginning until this point, the route is really not an easy one. In the beginning, my course advisor in UCSI did not agree my to transfer to UOM, because I have to take a lot of courses from other faculty, and it is not easy to help me fix my schedule and courses. She said she was not going to help me for this, so from the very first semester in UCSI, I have to plan and look for time tables for few terms, so that I would not miss any chance of taking the courses. After 2nd term, I found that the courses that are transferable to UOM are limited, because some courses in UCSI were not longer offered. I asked the help from IUPC (International Universities Placement Centre) of UCSI but failed. They were 2 ladies working in that department. The manager of IUPC is not helpful and irresponsible at all, another one is good and helpful but she is a new worker, so she knows very little and she could not help me.

In order to get more credits from UCSI, I sent a lot emails straight to my program advisor in UOM, luckily she did a very good job, I have 2 extra transferable courses then. For taking the Food Science Program in UOM, I took a lot of non- sciences courses. I did not like them because I have no interest on them at all. They are calculus 1, calculus 2, statistic 1, psychology, sociology, technical communication, java programming, macroeconomic and macroeconomic. Basically the non science courses I took in UCSI are more than my Science courses. Luckily, I could still manage to do well in these non sciences.

Besides this, I having difficult time while doing IELTS and student visa. I was down and worried when my friends decided not to go to UOM with me, means I will be going alone after all. I have a few courses end up are not transferable, I sent emails to different department of UOM to find out the problems and seeking help from them. I got some unhelpful and unfriendly reply but I keep sending emails to remind them, and finally I got all my credits transferred.

I have a problem signing up some courses in UOM too. After seeing my program advisor in person, I solved all the problems of my courses.

Although I am here finally, I have new challenge too. My new challenge is the studies here. The teaching pattern is far different from Malaysia, I started to have pressure and worried for not doing well. Sometimes I asked myself whether it is a good decision to study in UOM. I think I made a good decision, but the answer is yet to be known before I graduate.

The dean office of UOM.


International Student Card. Some shops offer discount to students with this card.


My student ID card. It is our meal plan, and library card

On Saturday, I received a call from a woman. She is the mother of Jia ying, a friend of Ming Sheng. She knew I was new to Winnipeg so she decided to take me around and since she has a car she can bring me shopping.

At first, I really need a car because I have so much things to buy. After seven days here, I am almost settle myself and get everything ready. I was so desperate to get a printer, because I knew I am going to print my course work alot, and the printing service is expensive here. So I check most of the computer shops' website, I could not find a good printer. I want a laser printer but there a lot of bad reviews for cheap laser printer. I was so loss and up set.

Last Thursday when I browse the website of Staples, I found a samsung laser printer cost $ 60 after offer of $40. I bought it online and I was quite surprice that the shipping service is free. I received the printer on the next business day and everything works fine.

After buying printer, I thought of buying a rack for hanging clothes. People like to use washing machine and drier here. However, I do not like to use drier because I worry the clothes will shrink and the clothes from drier are needed to be ironed. So with this rack in my room, I can dry my clothes in my room instead of using drier, or may be use drier less.

After the shopping, auntie treat us lunch and we went to a few parks. First we stopped by her shop, she is going to open a shop selling arts. Her arts gallery is very nicely decorated, there are a lot of arts and painting. I like them so much. After that we went to a park, there has an old iron bridge. It is a very popular destination because there is a shop selling nice and cheap ice cream. People always come here at night for a walk while eating ice cream. After that we went to Assiboine Park. I like the park here very much, there are alot of flowers and statues. After that we went to another park near our residence area, it is another park but it is a bit quiet.

After the long reading, it is time to show you pictures.
The art gallery

I like this the most, it costs $ 4000

There are so many paintings, some of them are only $ 20 to $ 30


The boss of this art gallery.

The Old Iron Bridge

Eating ice cream!!

The red river underneath the bridge. The whole river will become ice river during winter. People often have ice skating on the river.

The Assiboine park's muzeum.

Angel, Auntie and ME. Angel is my friend from Hong Kong.

The flowers are nicely maintained.

I like the flowers..

The grass is green and nice.

The back of the musuem is a restaurant with a nice garden. There are people having wedding party in the garden.

There is a stage, singers have their mini concert here sometimes.

The Kildonan park.

Last Thursday was my first day of school in my new school - University of Manitoba. I woke up early in the morning to get everything prepared before going to school. I went to my class with a map on my hand. I have 2 tours of campus so far, but I am not very familiar with the place yet. Luckily I could find all my classes. I went to a wrong class on Friday, because I jot down a wrong class number. It was less embarassed because there was another girl made the same mistake. In Marketing class, each of us need to have a cardboard with our name writen, so that the professor can call us to answer his questions. It is a bit challenging and scary. In statistic class, the professor wants us to use a Webassign, it is a program that allow us to upload our homework, and do our assignment online. Marks will be given automatically once we submit the work. But we have to pay for the program , it costs $ 16. After 2 days of classes, I started to have homework, I started to feel pressure, so I have to start working hard, and may be I will have less blog updating from now.

We bought a set of chinese chess when I was in Toronto. Now since I was here, we found a online website which allows us to play Xiang Qi online. My dear is a very good player of most of the board games. I won neither monopoly, scrable,nor chinese chess. Because he is just too Brilliant, he tends to know our mind and he will try to prevent us from what we want to do. However, I won a game today. I was so happy and shocked. I could not believe I can win because I am not good at playing it. I remembered that he could win with 3 turns during our first game last year. After some games, I found that I have improve my playing skill.

The food in Pembina Hall is good. It is buffet style with various food. Now, I realised that 15 meals per week is more than enough. I found that I had eat too much, I decided to have some exercises in room. I forced myself to run on spot for 30 minutes, do 50 sit-ups, and jump 100 times everyday. It is time to go to class. Bye

The breakfast looked so delicious right?

Today is my 3rd day staying in residences. I am happy and enjoying my life here. I got to know a lot of friends from different countries. I have 2 friends who are close to me now, we always stay together for lunch , dinner and party. They both are from US, Minneapolis. I seldom see any Asians here, I only met a few of them so far. They are from Korea, Hong Kong and China. I did not have a chance to speak Chinese here, so I hope my English will improve.

I went to a party last night. The admission costs me $ 8, I thought there are food and drinks serving. However, it was quite disappointing, there was none. They were only a few people at the party when my friend and I arrived. We had to spend money to purchase tickets for drinks. In less than 10 minutes, we finished a little cup of liquor. There were still not much people. At about 11pm, people started flowing into the party. This was when I found it less boring. People keep coming towards us and socialised. We dance only for a while because we were sick of the LOUD music. There is another party tonight, it is an off campus party. I hope it will be fun, because I don't think I am going to any party after school starts.