Tigger (Denise's visit), Chapel street bazaar and "Build-a-bear" workshop in chadstone.

Dear tigger Denise came to visit a couple of weeks ago. She was here with her sis and her parents for a holiday. We managed to do a bit of catch up and had lunch at Oriental Spoon, a Korean restaurant opposite Melbourne central. It's funny how you can not see or chat to a good friend for awhile and yet when you meet, there is no sense of unfamiliarity at all. ;) Wished we had more time together, but ah well, every amount of time to chat is valuable enough.

And she brought me the newest Jay Chou - Capricon and FM S.H.E albums! Super happy! They are so expensive to import from Hong Kong or ebay. Especially love Jay's new song - "稻香:Dao Xiang" which is about how people should be contented and with what they have and treasure their love ones and also "时光机：Shi Guang Ji" - Time machine; him playing the cute Doraemon guitar in the Music video. :) S.H.E this also had a few meaningful songs like "宇宙小姐：Yu Zhou Xiao Jie". It's saying girls should love themselves for who they are, something about inner beauty. And I love "安静了：An Jing Le"- a typical love song about a guy not being able to commit.

On Melbourne Cup day (4th Nov), we met up with wang-wang for lunch and then he brought us to this "hidden" bazaar along chapel street. Never knew they had a bazaar there, it was a walkway between the shops that you turn in and boom, there's this place with all these old vintage stuff for sale. Some stuff were old and some were new, but we mostly just browse through as some of the items were pretty costly.

Grabbed myself a love novel for $10 and the Guitar musical box for $12. Liking that the musical box is probably one of a kind now judging from the age of the box. The box had a "Made in Hong Kong" label on it which meant it was imported. It plays Elvis Presley's "Love me tender" and is still working perfectly fine, the guitar sort of turns around a small stand as the music plays. A real "romantic" ornament for the room. :p Heehee...

Over the weekend on our usual trips to Chadstone, we finally passed the "Build-a-bear" workshop. I remember playing the game on my nintendo DS ages ago and always tried to picture how the real shop would look like. Basically, you pick the "skin" of the teddy bear or animal you like (they have dinosaurs, a zebra, polar bear, rabbits and more!) then you bring them to the staff and they fill them up with the stuffing. Then you can buy clothing, shoes, hats and accessories for your newly created stuff toy. It's so cute lar...

There were these bunch of kids, (I think they were on a group trip or something) and they each held a stuff toy while they sat along together for a group photo. I just had to take a shot of them too, it was such a cute sight. I have a few teddy bears and have recently bought two more; one christmas 2008 white bear and the brown colour Target bear. So of course I was tempted to "build-a-bear" for myself too! :p But darling said he'll get me one another time. So heehee, I'm counting on him for it...

It's about time to upgrade the blog and template!

Howdie people, seeing all the new templates and cool functions that others have on their blogs, I guess it's about time I upgrade mine too! So off with the too-cutesy pink and blue banner which I didn't really like in the first place and on with one of the free blog templates. Haven't really got time to design a new template myself, it's all about using DIVs nowadays.

Anyway I shan't get too technical. Stay tune for more updates in the next week or so. Alternatively please "Follow my blog" and you'll be notified of my updates (I think!) :P. Works for blogger / gmail subscribers I know. :)

Mum's 60th Birthday Celebration - And yeah she doesn't look her age! :p

We celebrated my mum's birthday just a couple of weeks ago at Fortnums restaurant in the Dandenong Ranges. We initially wanted to bring her to Miss Marple's tea room, the usual place with delicious scones and dessert, but they don't take bookings. And not wanting to risk having having a long time on that nice sunny day, I guess second best was good enough. :p (P.S: Ang Mos like to drive up there to have tea on sunny days and that day was just beautiful...)

Anyway Fortnums served food similar to Miss Marples, apparently their scones were not too bad as well. But we were so filled with the main courses and surprised birthday cake for mum that we didn't bother trying out the desserts. Boy it was hard to find parking and it took quite awhile for the food to come too. But at least everyone was comfortable in the air-conditioned area.

Some shots of the place, the people who made mum's day and also the yummy food. Let's see what was on the menu; Seafood platter with fish, scallops, prawns, squid and wedges, Salmon salad, and others not pictured include Steam barramundi with vegetables, Veal Pot pie and Quiche... Let's say the food was good, but it kinda made you sick if you ate too much of it because of the grease I suppose.

Thanks to Ammie and weichao for buying the cake for my mum, I managed to sneak it pass her and got the waitress to keep it for us during the meal. Then afterwards, we even took the dessert menu and pretended that we want to order when the waitress brought the cake out to surprise her. After lunch, we took a walk at the pretty little garden at the back of the restaurants with a wonderful array of flowers in bloom and of course there was more cam-whoring as we walked down the road along the quaint little shops.

Bigger group shot - Thanks to those who camed along to join in Mum's 60th celebration. :) A person turns 60 yrs only once in a life time so I wanted to make it a memorable birthday for her. If she was back in Malaysia, her line-dancing friends would probably bring her out for a huge party. :p They were pestering her for photos after the celebration and I think I should get them resized for her soon...

Anyway work's usual, getting a bit into the busy period now at CFA now that summer is approaching. Been busy lately doing the new website layout and getting it ready to be launched in end november. Till the next time then...