What a Month.... What a Year!!!

Wow... today's already the last day of the month and the year.... time just simply flies. This month has amazingly flown by... I've had my parents here for most of the month... It has been a good time to spend some time with the folks - needless to say, the nagging of 'going to the gym' was there, but other than that, we played gin rummy, ate alot, and just vegetated.

So on reflection 2006 has been an interesting year.... let's see what happened:

January 2006 - lost Toby, went to Singapore for a holiday, spent Chinese New Year with the family after a long absence ;-)

February 2006 - Buffy had a litter of puppies, which out of the litter, I decided to adopt Waddle to replace Toby. I also started to get irritated with working at a sucky company called Opez and started looking for new jobs.....

March 2006 - Delise had her graduation and my brother moved to Perth to pursue his doctorate degree (which I doubt will be his last degree that he's collecting!).

April 2006 - I started a new job!! Way cool... and I'm still at the same job.... extra way cool!! :D
And I started my own company called Mustard Seed Consulting.... this company needs to be further developed in 2007!! Also started the volunteer singing at 2 of the hospitals here with my brother under a group called Healthcare in Christ

May 2006 - Eat Inc blog was formed... but we havent been quite proactive with it, so 2007 might be a good year to start being a little more proactive

June 2006- My Birthday!! :) & this blog's FIRST anniversary :)

July 2006 - got my 'freedom papers' officially... FINALLY.... and was suppose to start on a 'healthy' regime but ... yeah... postponed it to January 2007 :P...also started being a little more active in church and started attending YA....

August 2006 - Went for a murder mystery night which was pretty cool.... had a National Day BBQ at my place - my first official party at this house....

September 2006 - Went for a fruit party.... got a little fruity...

October 2006 - had an awesome Girls Night Out at Burswood... unfortunately we havent had one since :(

November 2006 - my aunt came for a visit... and streaked my hair pink... but it didnt quite last :(

December 2006 - had an awesome Christmas Party at work.... parents were here ...received great Christmas presents from Santa ...went to Fremantle Prison for their 'torchlight tour'

So what's 2007 going to be instore for me? No one knows except for the one above.. however, I do have a couple of things on my wish list which I hope gets answered before 31 December 2007....

Daylight Savings

So WA aka wait awhile, has decided to join the rest of the world and adopt daylight savings. We're on a 3 year trial to see if they like the idea of daylight savings... kind of funny I know to have a trial for daylight savings!! Whilst I welcome this move of having more daylight hours (it doesnt get dark now till 8.30pm) I have today fallen victim to the change of time - but I blame the computer!!! I changed the time on my computer and somehow, thru some miracle, all my appointments have changed as well... so today, I had an appointment for a long awaited massage at 1.30pm... but because of this change of time, my calendar on my computer put the appointment at 2.30pm! So I had forgotten all abt it and slacked off to the post office only to come back to the office to have a message waiting for me that I'm late for my massage appointment! ARGH! Could have done with a nice relaxing massage!!

Muppets

Back when I was in school, my friends and I formed the 'muppet babies' club... even though we were 16!! I was Fozzie Bear... and just doing this Muppet Personality Test I got of April Rain's blog.... Guess which muppet am I??

You Are Fozzie Bear

"Wocka! Wocka!" You're the life of the party, and you love making people crack up. If only your routine didn't always bomb! You may find more groans than laughs, but always keep the jokes coming.

The Muppet Personality Test

Pinky Airport Driver

I did a little experiment on Monday night and streaked my hair pink (only the top bits)... I like it but trying to get used to pink streaks :) Anyway, now's the season of everyone flying here and there... and I've become designated airport driver... here's my airport driving schedule so far

12/11 - pick aunt from airport
13/11 - send EC to airport
25/11 - send WL to airport
1/12 - pick mum & EC from airport
2/12 - send CK to airport (am)
2/12 - send EC to airport (pm)
7/12 - send aunt to airport
9/12 - send DC & family to airport (I think!!)
10/12 - send YW to airport (pm)
10/12 - pick EC from airport (not sure wat time)
11/12 - pick dad from airport

Anybody else want to be added to this list? :P

Winery Cruise

Yesterday, our office was invited to a winery cruise hosted by one of the financial planning companies that deals alot of their investments with us. There were approximately 50 of us and most were their high net worth clients (and also our investors) and suppliers. SJ and I 'scored' a thank-you mention by the host when he was giving the speech... and me being the only chinese on board made it easier for people to spot me. The food was pretty good I thought - well there were prawns and a pretty good vegeterian lasagne and free flow of wine :)

We also did a wine tasting at one of the wineries and I tried the Rose wine which smelt like Ribena... even tasted a little like Ribena.... the dessert wine was good though... nice and sweet :)

The sucky bit was trying to get back to the office after the function - there were no taxis :( and then when we finally caught a taxi from the Hilton (after taking the blue cat bus out of the bell tower) the taxi driver was a grump!! He accused me of not being careful and hitting the car door on the roadside bench... like hello... didnt he realise how bloody windy it was as well???

Old Friends & Lobsters

Last week a very very old friend & her family from TCC Singapore paid Perth a visit and stayed at the Pastors house. I had the luck to crash in on their dinner on Thursday night and had dinner with them all, realising that I havent seen GG & GME for like 11 years!! They said they last heard me going off to the UK and then lost track of my whereabouts since....

GME was my Missionettes leader when I joined the group in 1985 - alot has changed in the program since as well. Anyway it makes it a total of 21 years of knowing her. Good grief... time just flies...

We met up for lunch again on Friday at Fremantle. Had Cicerellos... yumm .... and pigged out. We said our good-byes after lunch - hopefully she'll send me some pics so I'll be able to remember them by.

For dinner, the young adults 1 & 3 combined a dinner and had lobsters courtesy of our resident lobster diver. We had 7 lobsters shared between 16 of us. The lobsters were so good!!! Unfortunately I was still quite full from lunch so couldnt quite appreciate the lobsters as much as I would have loved to.

Books & Perfumes

I know I've been slack in updating this blog. Too many things have been happening... all good though :) A lot of eating parties and get together with friends before the leave Perth for an extended long holiday, or some they're going back to get married. At the moment, I have my aunt bunking in with me, my mum arrives next week and dad follows suit shortly after. So I'll be busy with the folks... social life will be at a stand still for the time being...

Anyway, I've been obsessed with books and perfumes the last couple of weeks. In a span of 2 weeks I have bought 5 (or is it 6?) fiction books and 2 Jamie Oliver cookbooks... I'm kind of excited with the Jamie Oliver cookbooks as one of them has a recipe for Yorkshire pudding!! :) And I absolutely love Yorkshire pudding!! :) Hopefully next year I'll venture into a different type of cooking as well..... trying out the Jamie Oliver recipes :)

As for perfumes, I've been hanging out at the perfume shops and departmental stores, spraying samples and smelling them. Gave me a headache after a while. So far, I got the D&G Light Blue (courtesy of my aunt), and the CK Summer (the bottle is so so cool!) I want to buy one more bottle and am currently debating betweeen the Armani Code or the DKNY Red Delicious. Decisions decisions... my rationale is that I havent bought this much perfume since my uni days :)

Idiot Alert!!! BUZZ!!! BUZZ!!!!

No... I'm not the idiot for once... but it's with this guy that comes into the office. To me he is a space waster - he isnt employed by us, but the boss has given him a desk space to use and he doesnt come into the office everyday. When he comes in, he opens envelopes and does mundane stuff... I call him the space waster... amongst other names... he has other names like dirty old man, space waster and a f**kwit

Time and again he's asked me really dumb questions. Once he asked me what happened to his files as he left his computer running over the weekend and when he came back on Monday the files are 'gone' and the computer had rebooted itself. So I asked him if he saved his documents and he just looked blankly at me... and I said if you don't save your work, you cant expect it to be there when you come back after a few days... anything can happen like a computer rebooting itself....

Strike Two was when he asked me to do some interest calculations for him on Excel. So I did them and he thought I had some jazzy programme to do it. Anyway, I told him I saved the file on the shared directory, and he said he has no access to that directory. Next, I said I'll email it to him, then he said he has no internet access at work. Finally I asked if he had a thumb drive so I'll copy the files over. He asked me what a thumb drive is... after I showed him one, he said Oh yeah I have that in my drawer!! After I copied the files into a thumb drive, and went to his computer, his computer doesnt have a USB port!!! What the ....

Strike Three came this afternoon... he had already irritated me earlier in the afternoon when he tried to get me into trouble with the boss... then he wanted me to send an Australian cheque to Vanuatu, so I asked him to check that it can be done... so he said he'll email Vanuatu... and then he asked me what is the internet address here... So I said what do you mean by internet address... he said he is emailing someone and wants that person to reply to him here (at the office). So I asked him how are you emailing this person. He said I'm writing to him from my computer here.... but I dont have a work email address, so this person cant reply to here. So I told him that whichever email address he is emailing from, when the person receives it and hits reply, it will go back to whichever email address he has. So he said...But I want the email to come here not to my home.... It didnt make sense to me at all, but to avoid me getting anymore dumb answers, I gave him my work email address. Ok seriously, I think he lives in the stone age. Just then the phone rang for him, I told him he has a call waiting for him, and he asked me which one... erh.. we only have ONE phone line here and there was only ONE light blinking on his phone!!!

I had to go for a drive to get him out of my sight... seriously.... I might just end up being as stupid as him if I hang around him too much ....

Meeting with old friends...

Last night, my brother and I got invited to the Pastors house for dinner.... we had mee siam, roast pork, apple strudel and waffles. But more importantly, they had some very special visitors from Singapore - Pastors ST and MT .... they were only in Perth for one night as they had planned to travel down south from today until it's time for them to fly back.

I've known PST and PMT since I was a Missionettes girl... (gosh that's like a super long time ago!) and I haven't seen them for a very long time - could even be as long as since I've been to Oz as they've been travelling missionaries to India as well.

Anyway, it was a good evening catching up with them, talking abt old times, sharing jokes (courtesy of PST) , and playing a game of Taboo. Unfortunately we forgot to take some photos :(

The beginning of the 4th Qtr

Time just flies and now we're into our final quarter of 2006 - which means 8 weeks to the arrival of my parents. Things have just been happening the last couple of weeks that's led me to be a little lazy to write. I've finally recovered from my cold and the cough lingered on for a while longer, but it stopped last week. I still get abit of the 'ahems' but not as bad.

Last long weekend we ended up in Orchard Glory Farm Resort for the annual church camp. I have to admit that one of my motives of going there was to enjoy the good spread of food that was on offer, and needless to say, I was not disappointed. The dogs had a great time with with all their voluntary babysitters. I think they were pretty knackered by the time we left camp.

Last week, TC was back from Melbourne for a friend's wedding, so we (the ex bird girls) met up with TC on Thursday night at the casino and had dinner and a couple of drinks. I've found ou t that slushies at the casino is really good...

Then on Friday, I had a pretty classic day being a liability on the road that I was told to stay off the road in case I create a bigger liability... but we had DM's birthday (DM is the sister of my boss GL) and we headed to Oriel's for a nice relaxing lunch - with wine of course :) then dinner time, we had a couple of friends over for steamboat, moon cake and playing with lanterns (courtesy of CY's mum). Our original plan was to play the lanterns at Kings Park or a park nearby but after stuffing ourselves with food, we couldnt quite move. We ambitiously tried to get some inspiration from the moon and tried to write some chinese poetry but due to our limited grammar in the chinese language, we didnt quite accomplish that.

On Saturday, I spent a relaxing day at home just vegeing out and sleeping. There was a young adults dinner at the Santa Fe Restaurant which was really good and coincidentally, KM was having her friend's hen's night there as well, so we managed to sneak out every now and then. So as you can see, I've been stuffing myself.... I should get myself back to the gym before my old folks arrive and start their annual nagging .....

Aussie Germs are Weak :)

A couple of times last year, when I was working for the terrible company, I tried ways and means to have sick days. When my friends were sick, I offered to share drinks with them. They thought I was nuts coz if I had wanted to just sit at home, I can just call in sick. But the conscientious part of me says that I have to be sick to stay at home.... I know... I'm nuts

Anyway, earlier on this year, when I was back in Singapore, my friend LYT wouldn't share a drink with me coz she said she was sick. So I said to her, let's see if Singapore germs are stronger than Aussie germs coz I can't seem to get sick from Aussie germs.... so we shared a drink.... a couple of days later I not only fell sick but lost my voice for ONE WEEK... what was also good was that I scored another 4 days of extra time off....

Back to the present... I'm sick again... , I think I got my germs from some Singaporeans and Malaysians... and this time round, I dont really want to be sick coz I actually like my job! I've been stuck at home since Wednesday afternoon... sleeping, coughing, wheezing, sniffing, sneezing and when I cough, the dogs actually get scared :( My tummy muscles hurt from all this coughing... coughing sucks... The best bit is that I found out from the chemist that there's such things as cough capsules... yay... considering I'm not a fan of the cough syrup :)
Anyway, back to the couch....

Sept 11

Do you know how a certain memory of what you were doing at a certain time when something happened would always be inscribed in your memory? This is one of the dates that I think will be in everyone's memory. Time passes really quick that 5 years has come and gone since Sept 11, 2001. Common questions are Where were you when the attacks happened or What were you doing when you heard abt the attacks?

For me... I was still living in Sydney and getting ready for bed approx at approx 11ish pm when I saw on cable news abt some aeroplane flying towards the WTC and that just caught my attention and my eyes and ears didnt leave the tv or radio for the next week.

Fruit Party

Apple, Grape & Kiwi

So CB had a fruit birthday party last Saturday - she's the Grape :) Initially I was planning to go as a mangosteen but it got cold that night so I didnt want to risk wearing that top. It was an interesting party seeing what some of the other people wore. The more creative ones were CB as a grape, there was a watermelon as well, a couple of strawberries and peaches and who could forget seeing bananas in pyjamas!! I wonder what CB would come up with for her 21st!!

Sting Ray vs Steve Irwin

The news since 11am yesterday, one of Australia's more prominent conservationalist and environmentalist Steve Irwin got stung by a stingray's barb and died almost instantly. With his big eyes and smile, he always reminded me of one of the sesame street character,Elmo. Not meaning to be insulting, but just the facial expression reminded me of a muppet character. I have to admit when I first knew of him, his accent used to drive me insane - and it still does but after being in the country for a couple of years, it's pretty bearable. However, in his programs and appearances in the Jay Leno show, one could always see his passion for the animals that he showed.

Being a diver, and reading of how a stingray can kill someone is pretty freaky. I've seen these creatures in the water, gliding majestically in the water, one wouldn't think that they are capable of killing anyone even though we know that their tail is poisonous.

Here's to Steve Irwin, and as how my friend DLKP so eloquently put it, we need to eat more sting rays now to avenge what they did to him....

The Captain Did It ....

Contrary to popular belief, it wasnt the butler that did it, but the captain. What am I talking about? Well last Saturday night was the much anticipated DiG's murder mystery party. I gotta admit, I didnt quite know what to expect but I did have a good time. It was a role playing party, each of us had to play a part - I was the owner of a girl power employment agency :) We were 'interrogated' by the police chief and we were provided with clues through out the session. In addition, we were given a script on what to say when we were interrogated. At the end, we were given a piece of paper to guess who the murderer was. It was something different, a unique way to have a birthday party and the mini Freddos in the Freddo ice cream cake was yuuummmm...... And I managed to have a 'teensy' bit of DiG's home made bourbon... I wanted more ... pity I had to drive :(

After the murder mystery party, I headed down to meet my bro and his friends at the Belgium Bar....

Did I mention that last weekend was suppose to be alcohol free? :P

Happy Birthday Singapore

Yeah OK ... I know this is like one week late... Singapore's National Day falls on 9 August. This year, my bro and I decided to be a little patriotic. So we thought we'll invite some Singapore friends over to watch the National Day Parade (NDP). Little did we realise we actually have pretty limited number of Singapore friends. That was kind of sad. So in the end we opened it to the 'public'. We had a good mix both from church and EC and my friends - German (SF), Brazillian (LF), Indonesian (SW), Malaysian (YW) and Singaporeans. The Aussies bailed out :P It was also a case of East meets West. We fed them a good ole BBQ - but we at least had the usual chicken wings!! Impressively, the plates were in the theme of red & white. SF & LF made some Brazilian home made chocolates which literally melted in your mouth. The main purpose of this function was to watch the NDP. However, after several attempts to connect to the webcast, we managed to log into the Tamil webcast .... unfortunately, none of us could speak that language. Anyway, thanks to yours truly, who happens to get brain waves every now and then, suggested to EC to try and get the English commentary from the Singapore radio stations and it actually worked!!! Have to admit I lost interest in the NDP after a while.... the booze was more interesting.

It is funny how at these social gatherings that people would open up a little and you learn something about people that you wont learn if they weren't in these social gatherings. All in all I had fun - I wont comment as to how I felt the next morning.... after consuming wine (I lost count how many glasses), one can of Smirnoff Ice Blacks, bourbon and cokes, and vodka and lemonade..... for once I couldn't face food in the morning!! At the end of the evening, SF, EC and I finished a bottle of Jack Daniels.... here's a pic of us having dinner :)

Singlish....

SINGLISH PET PEEVES Does bad English irritate you?

What is it about bad English in Singapore that irks you most? Local words like 'lah' and 'lor'? 20 (10%) Bad grammar 102 (52%) Accent 26 (13%) Singlish is OK 49 (25%)

Total votes: 197

Perhaps this poll is too soon to criticise but to have a quarter of the people polled to say that Singlish is OK is disturbing. I had a hard time trying to decide which bad English of Singapore irked me the most. It's everything.... but what irks me most is the bad grammar and the accent. Personally, I have not been an advocate of Singlish ever since I was a kid.... perhaps it was the family upbringing where my dad always said we need to speak the 'Queen's English' and 'open your mouth when you speak'. Having been away for a number of years now, when I'm back in Singapore or when I hear another Singaporean speak in a foreign country I literally cringe. It makes it funnier when you try to hear a Singaporean speak Singlish to a non Singaporean and they have no idea what is going on. The foreigners think that we're not speaking English as we speak too fast. Singaporeans need to remember that when they are in a foreign country, they need to speak slowly as non Singaporeans are not used to our accent, slangs and lingo.

Having said all that, I admit I do speak with a bit of lah sometimes but that's only to fellow Singaporeans... I'm the first to admit that I speak differently towards Singaporeans and non Singaporeans..... but that's just because I dont see the point of being 'aksi' and I dont want to be labelled by fellow Singaporeans (especially relatives) that just coz I live overseas I now behave like an orang puteh.

An Alcohol Free Weekend....??

Yeah that's what I told TM and CB when we went out for lunch on Thursday... but do you think I managed to do that?? Heh....

Last Thursday, TM, CB and I went to The Vic for lunch ... once again, the lunch and company was awesome... after lunch it felt so good to just laze about as the sun was shining after like 1.5 weeks of rain and cloudiness .... we continued to sit and consume more alcohol. Somewhat through that, we decided to go to the Subi Hotel for more drinks... so off we went - on the way we got CB her Japanese Mayo and TM got a lamp.... and it's a really really cool lamp!! By the time we were at the Subi Hotel it was past 3pm (now where did the afternoon go.... and I'm loving my new job - I didnt feel the guilt to rush back to work!) Whilst consuming some Coronas, I made a comment on having an alcohol free weekend... TM and CB had the 'yeah right' look on their faces.... but for all intentions and purposes I was set to prove them wrong... until CB suggested meeting at the Queens on Sunday (today) for a Sunday Sess.... All in all it was a great afternoon spent well with two great friends...

Come Friday, YW asked if she could come over for some wine so there goes my weekend resolution... well one can always argue that the weekend starts on a Saturday :) However, I can safely say I didn't consume any alcohol on Saturday - instead went out dinner with the YA3... I have to say I'm still reserved with this group - as I dont really know how much I can 'push' them and also the extent of their sense of humour and I suspect their sense of humour is 180 degrees away from mine.....

This afternoon was indeed spent at the Queens... giving CB some morale support on her first official 'date' .... but I think she did pretty well :)

I've got DiG's murder mystery night next week which I'm pretty excited about... except I havent read the synopsis and figured out what I have to wear!!!

What Being an Aussie Means.....

I got this from JH today.... and no.. I'm not an Aussie :P

Being Australian is about driving in a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, then travelling home, grabbing an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab on the way, to sit on Swedish furniture and watch

American shows on a Japanese TV.

Oh and...... Only in Australia ... can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance.

Only in Australia ... do supermarkets make sick people walk all the way to the back of the shop to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.

Only in Australia ... do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries and a DIET coke.

Only in Australia ... do banks leave both doors open and chain the pens to the counters.

Only in Australia ... do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars on the drive and lock our junk and cheap lawn mower in the garage.

Only in Australia ... do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won't miss a call from someone we didn't want to talk to in the first place.

Only in Australia ... are there disabled parking places in front of a skating rink.

NOT TO MENTION...

3 Aussies die each year testing of a 9v battery works on their tongue.

142 Aussies were injured in 1999 by not removing all pins from new shirts.

58 Aussies are injured each year by using sharp knives instead of screwdrivers.

31 Aussies have died since 1996 by watering their Christmas tree; while the fairy lights were plugged in.

8 Aussies had serious burns in 2000 trying on a new jumper with a lit cigarette in their mouth.

A massive 543 Aussies were admitted to Emergency in the last two years after opening bottles of beer with their teeth.

and finally.........

In 2000 eight Aussies cracked their skull whilst throwing up into the toilet.

Good things comes in Threes

After being a grump last week, the rest of the week was exciting and busy (?) ... I should have posted this last week as it's been on my mind to do so... but time didn't permit.... Anyway, here's the 3 good stuff that happened and it all happened on the same day :o)

The first is that I am now officially a free woman and I have the papers to prove it :-P Even though I shouldn't be proud of this piece of paper, but it makes me a free woman. It's been a long and tedious journey to get to with a lot of support from family and friends and not forgetting the Big Boss above.... Secondly, had a great time at dinner with TM..... yeah... we had dinner and bourbon and cokes again!! Finally, RT called me up and I was so excited. I seriously thought I had lost contact with RT coz he some what disappeared from the face of the earth (well OK I knew he was being posted overseas for a couple of months but we lost touch - it was his fault!!). Anyways, he dropped in for a couple of drinks and we caught up with what has happened with life over the last half year. This also means I have my aqua buddy back so no more excuses for not going to aqua classes anymore... :o)