Best friends, good friends, whatever friends.

I was browsing photos that some of my best friends had on friendster / facebook and I've gotta admit there's a pang of jealousy whenever I see them having close and jovial shots with their friends back home. It made me realised that I was still stuck at that certain time frame and ever since they left Australia, I never allowed myself to open up or get really close to other new friends that I've gotta know over the couple of years here. Was it because I am not willing to let go of the happy memories I had with my bestest girls or was it because after they left, I felt that I can never really feel comfortable in the presence of new friends again.

I once spoke to Eileen before, she asked me if I had any best friend. Then I realised I was dumbfounded, I told her I had many best friends, I mentioned my chabohs, I mentioned my pooh gang and of course the bunch of secondary school besties. Then she told me, "But mel, how come you have so many best friends? I thought there should only be one best friend and many good friends?" I truly understood what she meant, but never thought of that until now. I realised I never did have 1 best friend at a point in time at all, it was always 2-3 good friends. You remember how when we were younger and we used to write in each other's autograph book? It was funny because I always had like a list of 4-5 Best Friends and 8-10 Good friends' column to fill up. There never was anyone in particular called "my best friend". Funny does it? I'm pretty sure that's not a very good thing because you can never boast to someone; This is a photo of me and my best friend and know that he/she will say the same about you too, just you.

Well I guess I wasn't fortunate enough to get just one best friend. And even so, maybe I shouldn't feel that pang of jealousy too since I myself have many best friends, so my best friends themselves probably have other other friends that they call besties too, I suppose. But it's still hard sometimes because time might move on and the environment might change, but those special and close to my heart never changes. Then again I realised I do have one best friend, he was always known as "Pal" to me, was always there to lend a listening ear, always there to lend me a shoulder to cry on. But it doesn't help that his GF thinks otherwise about that idea.

And it probably makes sense that my besties have the right to have fun and good times with their own besties back home too. And I'm like a few thousand kilometres away from them anyway. But still, photos tell it all sometimes and it bites sometimes, it really does.

Celebrating New Years 2008, Boxing Day, Christmas 2007 and more!

Time for photo explosion and updates to the past couple of weeks.

Let's start from the New Year celebrations on 31st Dec:

We had dinner at this Italian Bistro in Morwell by the recommendation of Wangwei. There was Ammie, John, Wangwei, Sookie, Weichao, Tubby, me and Ammie's friend from Clayton, Brandon. The food was not too bad, to name a few, there was Garlic Prawns, Pork Cutlet, Seafood Gnocchi, and I had Porter House steak with Tiger Prawns. Gotta say my steak wasn't that great at all, it was burnt a little too much for me. After dinner, we took a drive to Traralgon and walked the food off a bit at the Victory Park. Then we decided to head over to Kim and Ellen's place to say hi. But we landed up playing Monopoly for the next few hours till New Years, after which we all went out to light some sparklers. It was a great way to celebrate the new year. We chose to enjoy the fireworks at home instead of cramming with the 50,000 crowd at Federation Square.

Next was Boxing Day on 26th Dec

This is the first time I've ever went out for Boxing day in Melbourne. We headed down with Ammie, Jacky and Weichao in 2 cars. Oh boy were we in awe of the crowds at all the shopping centres! It was as if everything was FREE! We heard on the radio that some people lined up from 12am the night before to grab some good bargains! Check out the 2 aisles behind the Christmas tree at Northland, it's practically cramped with shoppers! I'm back to my normal clothes, bags and shoes craze(decide to halt on Transformers for awhile) and so I can say it's a happy shopping day! Tubbs and I were really tired by the time we got to Chadstone, and so we decided to have a cuppa at the David Jones Food Cafe. Ironically considering the times I've been to chaddy, it's the first time I actually went to that area. They sold heaps of exotic delicacies and food condiments. Dinner was at Rock Kung and it was really good to have a Hongkie around (Jack

Then there was the Christmas Eve party on 24th Dec

I was pretty sure I took a photo of the HUGE Leg of Ham that tubby bought, but somehow I can't find the pic. Tubby marinated it with Honey and spices and it was yummy but so huge that we ended up eating it for the next few days. We had a fusion of western and chinese food and the desserts were great as well! There was Beef with Radish, Vegetables with Bacon, Spicy Chicken, Christmas Pudding, Belgian Chocolates, Fairy Cupcakes etc. Anyway, those were the people(top pic) who attended. There were only 3 girls around that night and the males seem to dominate the house when they couldn't contain their excitement playing a soccer game on the PS2 throughout the night. Everyone brought along gifts for exchange and check out the happy faces of people with their prezzies. :P And Eileen if you're reading this, did u realize that the cap you bought for Yong was for "Infants & Kids"? It fits Jasper well though, hahaha... All in all, the party was all fun, we ate, we chatted, we opened pressies. And the next day, we went to church sleepily to celebrate the true meaning of christmas.

Dinner at Don Louis on 22nd Dec (Before Eileen flew off)

Yep, a usual snapshot of those who went above. It was a $9.99 buffet dinner and I've gotta say the food variety was much better than Pizza Huts'. But the desserts were awful though and if only we can bring Pizza Hut's dessert over to Don Louis, then it would be the perfect meal. For some reason after dinner, we all went crazy about this single toy picking machine at the far end of the restaurant. And after the first coin went in, it was nuts all the way! I swear you can hear Eileen screaming a mile away! We almost got a toy a few times, but it dropped at the last minute! So in the end we paid like almost $7-8 bucks just for for sweets! (Machine had another picker for sweets on the same play). And just a little note: Never stand behind Eileen when she's excited lest you wanna get "injure"... Muahahaha.. :P And that about rounds up the events for the last couple of weeks. Till then, have a great New Years 2008 everyone!