I’m intelligent.

Muahahaha. Isn’t it nice when someone calls you the most intelligent thing in the world?

But I’m only #15 on the list. It’s still quite a distance to the top! Woot!

The Many Faces of Devin Loong

Twenty-eight.

Woohoo! It’s the 28th and we are back in business!

We ran over our internet download limit. Sigh. For the past 1 1/2 weeks, all four of us have been miserably snailing ( no, not surfing ) along at 64kbps. It reset itself today, and we now have 30Gb of download to enjoy once again. Whew!

Note: Abigail and Brian have moved in with us. They’re looking for their own home, so in the meantime – Devin and I are hosts. (^_^)

Today – we went for Yuin’s BBQ. It was great havin’ a barbie ( that’s local slang for BBQ ) on the banks of the Yarra River. It was freakin’ cold in the middle of winter ( about 12 degrees at it’s best )… and we were all shivering in our shoes, but really great fun. Hehe. There was plenty of good food and new people to meet. (^_^)

The barbecue pits are provided courtesy of the local council. We press a button to heat it up, and then just clean-up when we’re done. There are a couple of them along the river. There was a party next to ours as well.

Ahh… the staple diet of any BBQ. Lovely lovely sausages, and a couple of mushrooms. Delicious. That’s really good lookin’ ( and tasty ) garlic bread inside that foil.

We brought our usual banana bacon, and Devin prepared a Malaysian-made ( not sure if it’s Malaysian-style ) dessert of almond jelly, longan and lychee. A tad bit too cold for a chilly winter day, but it’s like having ice cream in winter. (^_^)

Among Yuin’s guests was a chef. A real one. And we got some really fancy steaks, sprinkled with herbs and rosemary. Ooo…

Thanks Yuin, for organizing a great party out. (^_^)

ALSO, today is our one year anniversary – we got registered on this date last year.

Time does fly, can’t believe that we’ve been married for a year now. We’ve been busy adapting to life here in Melbourne as well as figuring out our roles in each others lives. It’s been quite a journey, and I’m pretty sure there’s plenty more challenges to come. (^_^)

Unfortunately, Mr Loong is feeling not 100% this week, he’s been a little under the weather. So we can’t go out for dinner to celebrate. Came down with fever on Thursday – but he’s alright now. (^_^)

We can do dinner another time, there’s lots more days to come. And dinner happens everyday. Hehe.

Man at work.

I’m dusting off my blog.

And to start the ball rolling again, I’m going to talk about Devin. Hehe.

My hubby has officially become a barista. He’s now working early hours of the morning, happily chugging thousands of cups of coffee daily at a little cafe in Canterbury. Seriously, thousands I think. He’s already got cool calluses on his hands from holding the milk pot all day!

See him at work!

And here’s his first cup of the day, my cup of coffee to go!

I woke up reaaaally early to go with him to work. It was an icy-cold morning, bRrrr…. but it gave me a wonderful opportunity to see him in action at his workplace, and also meet his friendly boss, Pepe.

I drove home after that and took the car for a check-up. Luckily everything was all ok! (^_^)

Good morning!

I wanted to blog this morning.

And then, as I sit here now with the window open, and a empty text box in front of me… I forgot why I did.

Haih, I’m busy. Too many things on my mind right now, I think I’ll just go back to work first. Hehe.

Have a wonderful day world ! (^_^)

I love Easter Bunnies!

These “were” expensive. Till Easter Day.
Then we got ‘em half priced, like Christmas decorations on sale after Christmas. Hehe.

And we ate one of the little ones.

Surprise, surprise! It was hollow inside. (@_@)

Ear-less bunny.

Yum. These are the best!

What a week!

It’s been a heck of a week.

First, Jason Mraz’s awesome awesome concert on Tuesday. Take it eaaasy. It was a blast! He was such an amazing entertainer, with his laidback attitude and amazing voice. He even broke into an opera!

My favourite part (other than when he sang my favourite songs of course) was when the entire band suddenly froze and held their positions. Then, their guest star ran around taking photos of them with a polaroid camera and threw the photos into the crowd. That was amazing!

Oh, and the synchronized dancing was very fun too! The entire crowd on the floor danced left, and right to the music. What a view! I had a seat, we didn’t get a standing ticket, I’d be too short to see anything. But we got to wiggle our fingers to the music and did a couple of waves. Hehehe. Simply amazing.

I LOVEEEED IT!

And then, the motherload of awesome awesomeness arrived. The iMac. We’ve been eyeing it for a while now, and when Myer’s had a 10% discount, plus 12 month interest free plan and double the points (which adds up to $160 Myers voucher) for Thursday only – we ended up signing some papers and lugging (literally dragging) the huge brown box home. Ok, Devin lugged it home. I provided plenty of morale support!

HAPPY!

Photos arriving soon, when I figure out how to get them onto our new iMac, and how to edit and resize ‘em for the blog. Woohoo!

HAPPY!

Happy for no reason.

I actually typed “No reason to be happy.”

And that sounded wrong! Oops. It should be the other way around. Hehe.

It’s a long weekend holiday for Easter, one of the few Australian holidays. I think the next break would be in Christmas. Hehe. And I’m sick. Down with a sorethroat, cough and flu – all in that order. So, not much of a holiday for me. I’m glad I don’t have to go to work in this condition tho’. Hehe.

I’m reading a book. It’s called “Happy for No Reason” by Marci Shimoff. Pretty good so far, I think I’m a mostly happy person. I like to see the good in all, even when things don’t go my way – but I’m sure it’s for a good reason.

Here’s a good one.

Image source unknown, found anonymously online – but we all know I didn’t draw it.

Anyway, I got the book from the Melbourne City Library. It was a pretty interesting experience, borrowing some books from the library.

Things are pretty hi-tech here. I’m not sure how far our own libraries have come.. having gotten a library card for the first time in 9 years after our days in college. Here, I applied online and reserved some books through their website. I picked up an Eddings and this Happy book was available. Got a “Coffee Basics” book for Devin too.

A week later, a notification email arrived and I went to the library to pick them up! Even so, I didn’t have to ask anyone for my books. I went to a shelf and looked for my name, and there the books were! After that, I headed to the counter to check them out. Simple as that. It was a good experience. And they had LOADS of books, including my old favourite novels. I’ll be going back again soon considering that a book costs over $20 here!

And to finish it off, (but it’s not from the book, just related) can you please do me a favour and read this aloud?

I’m going to be happy.
I’m going to skip.
I’m going to be glad.
I’m going to smile a lot.
I’m going to count my blessings.
I’m going to look for reasons to feel good.
I’m going to dig up positive things from the past.
I’m going to look for positive things where I stand.
I’m going to look for positive things in the future.
It is my natural state to be a happy person.
It’s natural for me to love and to laugh.
This is what is most natural for me.
I am a happy person!

Hehe. Now are you a happy person?

It’s a photo of Devin!

Hehe. Took a photo of Devin while we were waiting for the tram one weekend. Last weekend I think.

Not quite sure why the road was so empty, it was a Saturday morning on a main road.

Panasonic LX-Tiga.

It’s been a hectic couple of weeks. Which is why I haven’t been blogging for a long long time.

Work has stepped up, Mandarin class is getting more exciting and everyday when I get home – I just wanna pass out in front of the TV and do nothing. Hehe.

Med, I got an LX3 as recommended by Jon Low. Still experimenting with it, but so far the night scenery is absolutely fantabulous and does more than good in low lighting.

I heart the macro shots (which is very good with food photography) on Auto mode. I took this about 1″ away from the mirror. It wouldn’t take the entire camera for me, but just focused on the lenses.

Then Devin changed it to Aperture mode and we now have a picture of the camera itself.

No point talking more about it, you can find professional reviews from dpreview.com here.

IMPORTANT TO NOTE: Everything was taken with Auto-mode.

When I first got the camera, I did a few experiments… and it really does make a good magnifying glass. Can you recognize my decade-old watch? I usually squint to even make out the date with the naked eye, the camera does it 10x better than me.

Plus it can take some pretty cool-looking product shots, like this one of my well-worn, scratched Oakleys.

Now, another experiment.

This is a close-up of the material of my pyjama pants using my iPhone camera. Hehe.

And we use the LX3 to take my pants.

It automatically focused… and I could see the fibers of the cloth. I was flabbergasted.

And you’ve already seen what it can do with scenery, especially at night.

Apa lagi? Go buy one today now. (^_^)