My new place in Melbourne

I'm glad to be back in Melbourne. It's great weather--sunny, warm and beautiful. Moved into my new place on Monday. I'm housemates with Iylia, who has all the furniture it's awesome. I love this place!!! But my room was empty so we went to Ikea to buy some furniture. Lots of the things we wanted were out of stock but we made do with what was left.


My empty room. It's carpeted
Large built-in wardrobe

We wanted to bring the things home in a cab, but alas, the single bed wouldn't fit. So we had it delivered. That night I slept on the pull out couch, and Iylia had spare comforter and pillows. It was actually very comfy sleeping in the living room! haha.

Very early Tuesday morning, the furniture arrived

Boxes of furniture requiring assembling

Just 3 hours later, an empty room was transformed!

A bed, table, shelf and table lamp. The bed was kinda heavy, and I had trouble fitting the beam tightly into the headboard and tailboard. So I decided to hammer it. I held a sock with my left hand to hammer on it so I don't destroy the bed frame. But due to my sleepiness, I accidentally hammered my finger! Haha it was super painful!! It was slightly swollen and the nail's kinda discoloured.


Tuesday evening Iylia and I had dinner at Lazzat. Delicious. Anyway so we headed to his storage cage in QV to pick up my things. We were debating between taking empty suitcases along to pack the stuff in, taking a cab or making 2 trips.

BUT...we found 2 dented/broken abandoned Safeway trolleys in front of our place. So Iylia suggested we push those to load our stuff. It was damn funny, coz we were pushing empty broken trolleys down the street (10min walk). Iylia was nice enough to let me have the less broken one while he pushed the one without the hand-bar and broken rear panel. hahaha.

We got into QV carpark, ran and slid around in the trolley and got to the cage where we loaded all my boxes of stuff. It was perfect! But we looked so stupid and I was laughing hysterically.
My trolley loaded with boxes, a shoe rack which I hooked onto the outside of the trolley, and tried to pull the luggage bag.

Iylia hugging his broken trolley

The trolleys were v difficult to push uphill, and on unlevel broken pavement. Iylia kindly helped me pull the big luggage while I struggled to push the trolley straight. Then near our place, a young Japanese guy saw me struggling with the trolley and ran over to help. He said I looked very funny pushing it. Iylia single-handedly pushed and pulled both things and got to the gate quicker than me and Jap guy. haha. Hats off to you, Iylia.

Got home and unpacked all my stuff. They were kinda dusty. Anyway, so here's my room now:



Some photos of my house:

The living room: flat screen TV, DVD player, PS3?, Iylia's DVD collection, coffee table, couch and a plant.
The main door, and our shoe racks. The door on the right (with the blinds) opens to a balcony.
The dining area and our bikesThe corridor to our rooms and the toilet, and the kitchen
Fully equipped kitchen!

The toilet is huge:Our own washer and dryer!

There's a bathtub and seperate toilet bowl area too. haha.
I LOVE THIS PLACE!!!!!!

i went for training today. Hills totally killed me but I am SOOOoooooooooo happy to see my MUAC teammates again! And Tony too! YAY =)

Mexican Vday 2009

I'm at Changi airport waiting to board my flight. Leaving is almost like second nature now, I hardly think much of it, suddenly I'm here at the airport, just like going to take a train to the mall or something. Suddenly I've left the States, and I'm in Europe, then before I know it I'm in Singapore. Technically, I've already left even though I'm still in Singapore. Everytime I'm here I feel like I'm in a vacuum, trying to envision what it's like in many hours, when I step off the plane in a different place. But these days, it doesn't mattter where I am, I could be anywhere.

Anyway, I had a great 2 plus weeks back home. Didn't get to meet up with everyone I'd wanted to, but loads of time with the family, which is always awesome!

I did Lasik the moment I came back to S'pore, and that is the most awesome thing ever! No more inconveneient wearing and removing of contacts, no more hassle of brining contacts, solution and all that. Perfect eyesight, no discomfort at all. I love this feeling. Sometimes I feel like I've begun looking at life through different lenses--it's been a great 6 months, and I'll write about it more in my next posts.

Our steamboat dinner at home on the last day of CNY

The perfect valentine's day! Vday is supposed to be a celebration of love and to spend time with your loved ones, so what better way than another of our super fun dinners at home?! Yay, love it! No nervous anticipation, stupid expectations and disappointments. Bae and I making the famous Magnolia Bakery Red Velvet Cupcakes! I ate loads of this in New York. Red, delicious and sinful...just what we need on vday! haha.

The red batter--2 full bottles of food dye!


Tremendous success! They look so cute and biteable!

Rong chipped in to help put the frosting. We decided not to make our own vanilla frosting but buy the Pillsbury one from the supermarket. Bt alas! They ran out of vanilla so we made do with chocolate frosting.

Not too bad, Rong!

We made a MILLION cupcakes! we tried to squeeze them all into 3 batches and look what happened...

Due to the rotating glass bottom and the oversized baking tray, the 4 poor quarduplets in paper cups were SQUASHED WEIRDLY!!! hahaha when we opened and saw that we laughed till we almost died! haha and I kept making funny jokes about how we should go take these mutants to Janice and say: "Hi Janice, look what we made! Red velvet cupcakes! What do you think? Can we sell it at your dessert bar? NO?! But why?? We wpent 3 hours making it!" hahaha. hilarious.

Red velvet cupcakes with chocolate frosting and little red heart decorations! too pretty to eat.

And my MASTERPIECES...

The weirdo quarduplets! From left: meet the CUCUMBER, MONESTER, GHOST and POLKA-DOTTED EGGPLANT! hahaha.
Ooooh, more cupcakes with icing sugar, and a special limited edition one with moons and stars. hehe.
Ern busy at work on the decorations for our Mexican themed dinner. She's working on a cactus, if you can't tell...

Bern decorating our little Mexican hats

Rong the SAMURAI chef volunteered to chop stuff. Bae supervising.

Me teaching Rong how to cube tomatoes.

The Samurai chef with his chopped up ingredients. So cocky...
Making our own guacamole dip!
Tadah! Delicious!!!

For some reason Bae was super enthusiastic about blowing balloons. And that was infectious, coz after that Mum caught the bug and was pumping balloons incessantly. hahaha. She even accidentally pumped the nozzle into one balloon!

Bae and Rong fussing over a pack of old balloons which kept bursting. hahaha

Mum setting the tables and washed up most of the things
Anyway here are the final products:

I am embarrassed. What is this!?!? It meant to say "welcome to Mexico" in Chinese. But apparently no one knew how to write it...as you can tell, Mandarin is not our forte...
And what is this!? Don't know what language...I regret to say we might not be big on languages...
only?! let's go!

I love our crazy elaborate dinners, they're a family affair! the preparation is as fun as the dinner itself!
Getting ready
Me cooking the chicken with Taco seasoning
Yum!!

there's a photo of Dad fussing over the handwritten Lassi recipe from New Year's dinner. Haha this time it's strawberry lassi! No thanks to the airport computers, the picture was accidentally deleted. ARGHHH

Putting on the Mexican hats
Ooo, our little Mexican hats Ern made.
Dad with his. They kinda look like Jewish caps...
The fianl product! Nacho chips with homemade guacamole dip, salsa and sour cream. Taco chicken, letttuce, tomatoes, Jack cheese, onions for the Taco shells (not out yet)

Bern showing off her Taco

I was so tired from preparing dinner since arvo, that I totally fell asleep after dinner! And missed my date with Yimin at Walas. Haha, I'm so sorry! But I did watch a DVD--Get Smart with the family when I woke up an hour later. haha. fun times =)

Ok gtg, I'm about to miss my flight! Will update more when I get to Melbourne! Take care everyone =)