The cold is coming! Achoo!

Hurrah, just got an email from my Dad with pictures of what my Mom’s been up to these days at home!

She’s taken up crocheting. I’m glad she’s taken up a past time, retirees don’t really have much to do at home. And double the hurrah, because she made this scarf and hat for me!

It looks awesome, and a heck of a lot of work! Thanks Mom!

I can’t wait for it to arrive in Melbourne via a fellow traveler soon. Hehe. So, who’s coming in April?

We are online!

We moved into our new apartment about 2 months ago. And since then, we haven’t had any phone or Internet connection at home. We had almost become quiet, withdrawn and very attached to the TV type people. Almost.

It was mostly Devin suffering from Internet Withdrawal Syndrome (IWS) or No-Internet (because I can still go online at work), and yesterday when the line came alive and we successfully connected to our ADSL2+ line… we could almost hear the angels sing, “Hallelujah!”

Hehe. So here comes the fun part!

I wrote this on 16 March 2010 on my to-do list. We were getting desperate, and I was starting to become very nasty to the Telstra people on the phone who were extremely good at flying aeroplanes and cancelling, and rescheduling.

Being unable to get connected = CRANKY.
Being unable to get connected many times = VERY CRANKY.

And yesterday, on 29 March 2010 – we were connected. It’s a good feeling. The journey is finally over, and I crossed off the very last item on my Moving Home to-do list. From an estimated 20 days to get connected (after the phone line was put in), we only took 5 days instead. ^_^

*happy*

Hello thirties!

It’s the 25th of February, and I’m now 30 years old! (^_^)

Happy Birthday to me!

The delicious chocolatey cupcakes were baked by Emily and with a little surprise session by the gang for me. *sniff* Thanks guys! (^_^)

Goodbye Kuala Lumpur, hello again Melbourne!

Goodbye Kuala Lumpur. We shall miss you with all the glorious food, great shopping and wonderful people you. Ten days was so not enough! (We won’t miss the hot and humid weather tho!)

Photo of KL taken from the penthouse at Dan and Em’s apartment in Cheras, KL.

And hello Melbourne! ^_^

Just arrived on Monday after a forever long flight on Air Asia. It’s not exactly the best, but it was cheap and we did arrive safe and sound and EARLY. Malaysian’s don’t stick to speed limits no matter where we are. Even in the skies… (@_@)

Do you believe in magic?

I believe in magic.

I’m a silly person sometimes. Sigh. I dropped my purse the other day. I think it fell out of the car when I go out of it, and didn’t notice it because I was rushing. My bad. (T_T)

But today, magic happened. I received a phone call – telling me that my purse had been found. I believe in good in people, and that kept me hanging on to hope that it would come home.

And it did.

And I’m really thankful that a good Samaritan had turned in the purse with all it’s contents intact.

I’m truly blessed and appreciate every drop of it, thank you so much. (^_^)

——-

But that’s not all there is to this story… because I wrote this entry two weeks ago, on the 13th of July. I saved it in draft, waiting for the moment when I could post it… and the moment arrived today!

Today had happened EXACTLY as I described, and the phone call came from Devin who had excitedly read me my letter from Victoria Police. And so, I’ve just come back from a nearby police station, and everything is still in there, packed in plastic bags – just like CSI evidence. Hehe. But… seriously, it’s all there – including $92.50 cash.

So there it is.

Magic – AWESOME!
Good people – DOUBLE AWESOME!

I believe alright! And it’s a beautiful feeling to believe. (^_^)

Brunch @ Fandango

A bunch of us descended on Fandango Café today. We had a late brekkie, which turned into lunch – and so became brunch. Hehe.

BY and WL had decided to visit Melbourne this weekend, and that’s how we got ourselves a preeetty large group of hungry people out for brunch. We were seated out back in the courtyard, and it was a nice cold winter day. Plus I got to plonk my bum right next to the heater. Ahhh… it was really nice and toasty warm. Unfortunately, or not – we had rushed out, and I forgot my LX3. Sigh. Just the iPhone and me again. (>_<)

the food // Fandango Café was recommended by KH who absolutely fell in love with the home-made maple butter. Yum, it tasted exactly like butter, salted but had a slightly sweet aftertaste to it. We both heartily agree that it was absolutely delicious as well.

Top right // Poached Egg with Avocado – just grabbed a photo. forgot to ask for a bite!
Top left // Pesto Scrambled Eggs with Bacon – delicious!
Bottom right // Pancakes with Bananas and Strawberries – too busy eating our own dishes, forgot to grab a bite as well!
Bottom left // French Toast with Home-made Maple Butter – my favourite dish of the lot, a wonderful combo of sweet and savoury.

the atmosphere // very cosy, tiny little cafe with plenty of warm and welcoming touches. The teapots had tea-covers! And I loved the quaint red-brick courtyard out back, and there were very friendly and welcoming staff. It was crowded, but we still felt loved. Hehe. Thumbs up!

It was a great meal with wonderful company – especially so when you can catch up with friends from back in KL. (^_^)

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.

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!

Ready, Set, Sail!

Devin, myself, Ivy and Ryan went to the Docklands to try our hand out at sailing today!

It’s an event which is held as part of the Summer Fun in the City event by Melbourne city. We saw the signboard during dragon boat practice on Saturday and decided to come back on Sunday to give it a go!

Two of us got into a little single-seater yacht after a quick explanation of how sailing works – off we went! As you can see, it’s short enough for us both to put our feet up, and just big enough to put a person on each side. Devin’s side was the heavier side. Hehe.

ZOOOM, ZOOOOM. It was surprising fast, and taking corners really took us by surprise! We were almost drifting like race cars! Woohoo! Winds were really strong occasionally and we were zipping across the water at moments like those! Hehe. Almost capsized a couple of times when ‘turning’ or ‘cornering’ as I felt it. Luckily for us, our guide explained that it’s not really possible to capsize the yacht. The rudder below weights a good 65kg and balances off the top part of the boat very well. You won’t end up in the water unless you jump off.

Devin handled the yacht for the first half and hour. You have to pull the sails to catch the wind, and there’s a joystick that controls the rudder. I took the next half hour. It was fun!

At my command – we sailed into a group of swimming seagulls and sent them flying in all directions! MUAHAHAHAHA! Take that you squawking stalkers!

We had some beautiful views from our little yacht. Took some photos. This is our dock. It’s just by the Bolte Bridge.

Turn your head around and there’s a great view of Melbourne City from the water.

Here’s Ryan and Ivy enjoying their sail… slowly cruising by in their little yacht with a green sail.

There are the big luxury yachts all around too. You can see the Southern Star in the background. It’s a huge ferris wheel, newly opened in Melbourne.

After a good hour or so of sailing merrily about in the harbour, we were nice and relaxed. Sticking our feet and arms out of the little boat. This where I reckon’ we started to get nice and toasty. Devin’s arms and my knees were sunburnt. (>_<)

Time to head back to the pier as our bellies started to rumble in hunger. Ryan and Ivy got a head start, and I got a nice picture. Hehe. But anyway – the race was on!

We headed back, sailing at full speed! We trailed steadily behind for most of the journey back, but the wind was on our side as we took over in a sudden gust of wind! Woohoo! We docked first at the pier! Hehe. The little yacht #222 on the far left is our winning boat.

And here are the sailors of the day – all macho after their one hour experience out at the seas.

Me and Devin. Hehe.

After that – it was off to the city in search of food for the rumbling bellies. We went hunting for some Malaysian mamak food.

Hehehe. Saw a red bowling pin walking on the streets. It was funny! Had to run a little to catch up with it for the photo.

We had lunch at a restaurant called Bismi’s Gold An Fork. They had a weird signboard.

We went in, and on first impression – it didn’t look very inviting. The interior was dim and smelt slightly curry’ish. They had a counter like McDonalds or KFC and you had to order your food and take a number. Nothing at all like a mamak store back home in Malaysia but most importantly – the food was pretty good. It was too dark to take photos, but we tried the roti canai (plain and with egg) and nasi goreng and nasi briyani. Teh tarik was good too. It passes the test. Yum!

Ivy gives it her thumbs up! Me too! (^_^)

Basics of Mandarin

I’m learning Mandarin again – reading, writing and of course, speaking.
Ivy is teaching me, she’s such an star. I’m really glad she’s offered to teach me. (^_^)

This was what I learnt for my first lesson:

我的名字叫蔡兴利。
wǒ de míng zì jiào cài xìng lì.

我是女生。
wǒ shì nǚ shēng.

我今年二十九岁。
wǒ jīn nían èr shí jiù suì.

And the numbers one to ten.

一 yī
二 èr
三 sān
四 sì
五 wǚ
六 liù
七 qī
八 bā
九 jiù
十 shí

Recognizing and writing characters are quite alright. It’s the pronounciation that’s got me stumped. That’s… not so easy. (^_^) I speak in monotone…

But the goal is to be able to read aloud Doraemon. I will do it!