Gong Xi Fa Cai 2007

And so we usher in the year of the Pig.... we had a good time ushering it in... had a massive 10 course reunion dinner at JS & SS place... and ate to our hearts content. YSF said that because there was so much left over, it means that we will all have an abundant life this year.

Then for dinner on the first day, we had steamboat at my place... I attempted to make the Coca chilli dipping sauce and from what my guinea pigs said, they think it was almost like the real stuff...

To put a damper on our cheerful spirits, the house had an attempted break in while we were having dinner and the burglar tried to break in thru the front window (which is thru my room). We only found out about it when WL had to move his car and reaslied the broken window. I think a couple of things foiled the attempted break in, the dogs started barking, humans started yelling at the dogs and the window wasn't big enough for him to get in (unless if he was a kid or a woman).... Needless to say I'm now paranoid...

Five years on....

This month (and maybe today) marks the fifth anniversary of my move to Perth from Sydney.... it was an arduous journey for the first couple of years, but I think the last 1-2 years, things have levelled of a bit. So what do I still like about Perth? Let's see... my dogs, the weather (ok I dont like temperatures in the 40s or below 10), the openess, the freedom, the food, the fact that I can drive around here and not take public transport, and the friends I've made. What I don't like about Perth... expensive shoes, boring bags, and the EARLY closing hours of the shops, especially the supermarkets!!!

Prank!!

My brother and I pulled off this prank on our cousin ....

Dad told us that our cousin and her husband was going to do a presentation to his class at SMU on working together as a husband and wife team....So bro and I thought it'll be quite funny to hear what they have to say, so we suggested to dad to skype the web cam with us so that we will be able to watch them in action - abt 6pm perth time

So dad did and during their presentation, dad and I were sending sms to each other and my bro and I just kept laughing at what they said. So half way thru their presentation, bro and I thought of a question and sent a txt to my dad and said the perth contingent got a question to ask and the question is you seem to know quite abit abt businesses, has your family always had a business that you helped out in. So dad replied saying yes good training. So we kept insisting that he shd ask our cousin just for the fun of it.

So when it came to question and answer time, my dad said "The group of students at University of Western Australia would like to ask you a question ...." That just triggered off laughs from my brother and I .... the 2 of us make up the UWA students?? And the look on my cousin's face was classic coz apparently dad didn't tell them that they were bring broadcasted to Aust and that was dad's way of announcing to them they were being shown 'live' to Aust. BUT what made it funnier which we found out later was that my cousins didn't know it was us who asked the questions until later when my dad showed them the text message!!!

Classic.... pure classic....

Book News

I was kind of sad when I read that Sidney Sheldon passed away. You can read his obituary here. He was the very first author that I got hooked onto when I was 13 (I think!) after I saw the mini series If Tomorrow Comes. I will miss reading his books. He will probably be well remembered for writing the tv series "I Dream of Jeannie".

And onto another news, the last Harry Potter book will be out July 21, 2007!!! Can't wait... might have to start reading the last few books to remind myself what has happened so far so I wont get so lost when I read the book. Have to remember to place an order (yes, there's a level of kiasuness here) ;) And so the countdown begins .....

bis wir wieder treffen

Geez I hope I got the above right.... I tried using Babelfish to translate - Till We Meet Again.... Anyway, we held a farewell dinner for the Freys' on Saturday and had some of our other friends over as well. The Freys were friends of my brother but we managed to get along pretty well :) I will always remember going for dim sum with them and introducing them to chicken feet and century eggs. They left behind so much stuff .... but they also left behind some really good alcohol, so guess who got to inherit them? According to them, I drink pretty well for a non-German, and with a height like mine!! :P They will be fondly remembered.... and hopefully one day we will meet again :)

2007 So Far....

Managed to see McNaught's Comet on Tuesday at Salter Point Park. Initially it was a little difficult to locate the comet - what we thought was the comet at first wasnt the comet :) It was also pretty cool that one of the people there had telescopes that we could have a better look at the comet. The telescope had to be adjusted a little as I was too short to reach the view finder :P The evening finished off with waffles :)

The last couple of weeks have seen me thru a feeling of xianess... seriously if the beginning of 2007 is already like this I'm not really looking forward to the rest of 2007 if my mood isnt going to change.

Trying to plan a holiday in June with my friends - every year we try and plan but every year one of us would change a job and then we're stuck with probation times... so let's hope for all our sakes that this year (or at least until June) we hold off changing jobs!

This weekend promises to be fun... going to try and cook some chilli crabs tonite - if I can find the crabs, tomorrow evening there's KM's birthday party and then there's a farewell party at my place for my bro's German friends who are leaving Perth for good. And... KR recommended that I read 'My Sisters Keeper' by Jodi Picoult and I can't seem to put the book down! And next week... is a 4 day week... YAY!! :)

The Engine has yet to start....

I've been trying to get my engine started... to go to the gym, to be on time for work, etc etc... but it's so damn hard :(

My year so far started on a pretty positive note but the last couple of days has gone down a little which is affecting me a little on the emotional side. I'm hoping it'll improve soon. I hate feeling so crappy... it affects everything that I do. Maybe I need a Biorhythm Calculator :)

Last week I managed to catch the movie Borat with my bro and WL - I kind of skived of work on the basis that I needed to rest... but hey watching a movie is a form of rest :P I can't believe I actually went to watch the movie...

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!!