Meeting Jaelyn again and a first party night of Wii.

We met up with Janice and Joseph last friday. Almost 7 months since we last met as Janice went to the U.S with their daughter Jaelyn for 3 months shortly after April and then mum was here visiting and so the time just flew by. Wow has little cutie Jaelyn grown! Her hair's much longer now and she has much more responses too!

Dinner was at aunty's (Wah Kee) in Clayton as they had to find a "baby-friendly" place. Jaelyn was actually pretty good and sat quietly during the course of dinner. Her favourite was her plastic spoon which she held on to it tightly for the whole time we were there. I tried feeding her and she looked relunctant at first, but eventually gave in. :) It was only after dinner when the hours went by as we chatted did Jaelyn get a little bored and wanted to move about. So we took turns carrying her to watch the fishes in the tank while the guys chatted. And Aunty took out a toy mat puzzle for her to play with. You can see Tubby in training above. She seemed to have taken an instant liking to him!

On Saturday, we also finally met up with busy-guy Wangwei, Khim and Ellen again. Daniel bro also joined us as it was his last weekend before he flew back to Singapore.

Dinner was "all you can eat" at this Hot Pot restaurant in Glen Waverley and it was yummy! You get two choices of soup base: spicy and normal flavoured. Certainly good for that cold rainy day! After that we retreated to our little hut for some Wii gaming! You can tell all of us were pretty much engrossed in it except for Ellen who watched from the side. Also being a Lego fan, she preferred to look through my Lego stuff or play with Jasper. We tried getting her to join us in some of the games but she just wasn't into it.

The boys really got into it when we were playing Virtual Tennis, they were literally up and about jumping here and there, especially Khim. And it was just such joy to watch when people have fun! The night ended around 11pm-ish as Khim and Ellen still had to drive all the way back to Pakenham. So that was a pretty fun-filled weekend for us.

An annoying person, Go for Gold Trivia Night and Lenny's farewell dinner

Boy was I annoyed by a phone conversation I had in the afternoon. For those who might know him, he was an ex Gippy student, a singaporean guy who has a hongkong girlfriend and they are always touchy-feely / over lovey-dovey in front of everyone. Now his name happens to start with A and because of that he's on the 1st location of my phonebook and I must have accidently dialled his number without knowing, the next thing I knew he called me back and asked me who I was. We said the usual hello how are you and then he said "Oh I'm surprised you're still here." And I was like "Ah yeahhhhh, I got my PR and stayed on..." What the hell? Arrogant shit who thinks so much of himself and think what? Only he has the ability to get PR and stay on? Gosh...

Anyway not to ruin my mood anymore, let's get on to other things. Last friday, we had a Go for Gold Trivia Night - A Company Event. I don't feel right calling my workplace a company because it's more of an organisation. Anyway here are some photos:

It was held at the boardroom which is usually seperated into 3 meeting rooms. Basically it was a fund raising event for a charity, which was the cystic fiborosis this time. We answered questions about TV shows, songs, history, science and stuff and you can even "buy" answers when you need them.

These are few of my closer colleagues which I work with, all from the same department. It's too complicated to explain exactly which because we have too many departments!

Other colleagues from other departments dolled up to the nines... heehee what a team! But they weren't the only team who had "team clothing", another table also had people wearing the same shirt. Too bad we couldn't be bothered.

And like every CFA event, there's always the okay everyone stands up game, you answer questions and if you're wrong, you sit down and the last person standing wins the prize. I was the 3rd last to sit down, what a shame... haha...

Then darling and I also went for a farewell dinner for our dear Lenny. Like most of our close friends, he too found it hard to get a job here and so he opted to go back to Singapore for the job offers waiting for him instead. Here are some pics from the dinner:

Lenny's friend Ash also came along. They call him the "guai-lou" because he and his parents have stayed in Hong Kong for more than 10 years because his parents were posted to work there. He's british and he's now studying in Melbourne and no he can't speak a word of cantonese. :P Something like tubby lar haha...

It's such a sad thing that OZ makes it so hard for people who love their country and want to stay on here. We have had a few close friends who couldn't stay on because of visa or job issues also and now the same thing is happening to Lenny. :( Ah well ladies and gentlemen, we are still waiting for the day that you all will return here for good. And you should know who you are. :D

Malvern Collectibles Fair and Darling's Birthday Celebration.

Darling and I went to a collectibles, hobby and memorabilia fair at the Malvern Town Hall a couple of weeks ago. As usual he was keeping me company as this was another event organised by the guys from the OZ Transformers forum. Even then, it was not all boring for him as it's the first we ever went to such a fair, there were some pretty fascinating old stuff that people were selling there. I took quite a few photos on my phone, but it was accidentally deleted because of some technical fault with the Nokia PC Suite, so I'm left with only one below and the other two were taken from Events Vic website.

The interior of the town hall looked something like a small version of Melbourne's Regent Theatre. It also had a 2nd level platform with seats for people to watch, I'm guessing musicals or performances in the past. Now I think they use it for community use. Found some old school McDonald's snoopy stuff that was sold in the 1990s!

And yet more stalls! There were about 50 or 60 over stalls I would say and other stuff you can find include lots of old and new Star Wars comic books, figures, Lego sets, video tapes, CDs and more! Seemed like people are pretty crazy about Star Wars. There were also signature products and old collector's item like Antique dolls, Beanie Baby toys, model cars from the 1980s and so much more! Also saw old porcelain tea sets, old board games, heaps of old movies and comics, toys and also other quaint elegant stuff.

And of course there were a couple of stalls selling a little bit of Transformers stuff (and were way overpriced for selling fake reissues). I found a nice little design coin purse from Russ for mum. It was made of silk-like material and had the drawings of 2 ladies on it and was brand new, paid $10 for it. And for myself, an old R2-D2 robot because he and C3PO are probably the only characters I like in Star Wars! I just have a thing for robots and that's that! :p And now I'm into Wall-E as well! (But that's another story for another day!)

We also celebrated the birthday's of darling, weichao and a belated one for Lex on 16th August. It was a birthday luncheon at Shark Fin's house in Melbourne. I thought the food was alright, for some funny reason, it didn't taste quite the same as before.

Group photo taken by one of the "irritated" waiters as they were all waiting for us to get over and done with so they can clear up and go home. But the manager said we could stay as long as we want, and so we sort of dilly dally with the cake cutting. (Okay no lar, we didn't deliberately take our own sweet time lar!) :p

Then in the evening, darling decided to give everyone (who could make it), a treat at Wah Kee, a Malaysian Chinese restaurant that we love to go and eat at Clayton. Usually we get our food in about 15-20mins, but because that was a Saturday night and we eat ordered individual stuff like Prawn noodles, Curry Laksa, Hokkien Noodles, Beef Hor Fun (I know I'm making you hungry! :D), the food took about 1 hour 30 minutes to come.

Auntie was pretty apologetic about it because we frequent there very often and usually it's good service. But I'm glad everyone was happy with their food when it finally came. And to make up for that plus it was darling's birthday, she gave us a free banana fritter with 2 scoops of ice-cream. Yum, it was a food overdose day! :p

Someone got me Bumblebee, Ying's belated birthday dinner and melbourne trip.

At last, some photos to go with the post, thank God cause I too tired to write much. Had to attend a marketing seminar with my colleague at 7am yesterday and I'm still feeling sleepy now. On a happy note, I met some great guy fans from the OZformers forum and they were out on the search for my Bumblebee 08 for me. And you know what? One of them got me my Bumblebee 08 for me!!! SWEET... Will be meeting him down Melbourne next week to collect it. *Yippie* These guys are so awesome and nice! ;) You know who you are!

We also celebrated Ying's belated birthday party a couple of Sunday's ago. Poor girl had to pick her candles from her cake and get her face smashed with cream. Don't have the photos here, think Sookie has them. Jason got a video or it as well.

Next is the City trip last Saturday. Tubbs gave in to his craving for Yum Cha for the usual Imperial Kingdom at Blackburn. It was awesome as usual, but we had to wait ages for his chicken legs again. Dinner was at a Korean restaurant along Latrobe Street which Cynthia recommended us to try. Food was not too bad (though of course not as authentic as those I had in Korea) and the prices were reasonable as well. Would definitely go back to eat again.

I had to say I didn't shop much this time because I was on the search for my Transformers. :P And even though we went to Chadstone, I didn't buy one item of clothing or shoes at all. Disappointing isn't it? At least I got a pair of white boots and some skincare stuff. So I updated my shoppaholic blog with whatever (non transformers stuff) I bought in the last few weeks, which is pretty little actually.

Lamenting again, the Celebrity quiz and Tubby the Chef

Len was bugging me to update my blog a couple of days ago, and I told her there was nothing happening to update about. So life is back to boringness after the Easter hols, and can you believe it? Australia doesn't have anymore public holidays in the 2nd half of the year except for the coming Anzac day and Melbourne Cup day! So it means it all work and no play for the rest of the year unless you take your annual leave. :(

Anyway, I took a Celebrity Quiz on Nine MSN:

Total Score: 19

16 - 19: Magnum Ego Caramel

You're a healthy Magnum Ego Caramel, and you're not afraid to show it — it just oozes out. It's got you in some sticky situations but your convincing act fools most into thinking you're just sweet. You too can take the quiz here

Although I really have no idea what that actually means, but what the heck, I was bored. So other than that, life evolves around badminton, tennis and swimming (plus gaming and reading :P) after work everyday or during the weekends. Yes, that might seem like I'm kinda sports crazy lately, but damn the "pudgyness" is still there; Maybe because I eat as much too. *sign* And how can I help when I get to eat good food like this at times:

Delectable dishes created by Chef Tubby. Did I mention before that he's a great cook? The long hours at work mean that when I get home, I'm too lazy to cook anymore. So darling spoils me sometimes by cooking me a specialty meal when he has an inspiration. :D We always sit down and look at the food, and I'll ask him to describe it as it would be in a menu, then we'll eat and discuss about what ingredients or sauce is missing or too much. Mum always thought that it might be a good idea to open a restaurant in future. *dreams* woah, ladyboss, uhuhh, uhuhh! B)

Mum's Farewell Dinner, Airport Sendoff and Dinner with Lenny

It's nearly a week since Mum went home and I'm missing her. :( Had a pretty emotional week, apart from missing mum, I was also thrown into the dilemma of having to make a decision which will yet again affect my life; the decision to return to SG sometime mid year, continue working for awhile and renew my SG PR, leave my darling tubbs and Jasper here OR to remain here in Aust, FxxK the SG PR and risk getting my loved ones into trouble because I'm bound to the "beloved" SG govt. by certain conditions. Oh I so "love" the govt. in all countries! :O And as the day keeps going, I get more frustrated, and all I can hope is that God will lead the way when the time comes. Meantime, here are more pics from Mum's farewell dinner, airport sendoff and dinner with tubb's super-irritating buddy aka Monkey Boy.

Drool at the yummy food we had during mum's farewell dinner. Jason and Alex also made Bak Kut Teh, but the photo didn't do the delicious food justice, so I decided not to put it here.

The wonderful people who made the night and mum's day. And yes my arms look chubby as always, so is my face I know, who cares la. haha. :)

The sweeties who accompanied us for a night's stay in Melbourne and to send mum off at the airport the next day. And yes, $200 over bucks was spent on shopping. *Ima soo ashamed of myself, or am I?* :P

Later that night we met lenny for dinner. He brought us to a Greek restaurant near his place. Food was good; marinated calamari, seafood platter and meat platter, and for that, a pretty costly bill too. And I think lenny has obssesive hyper behaviour, i.e. he can't stop being a pest! He just has to irritate me. And poor Jasper fell into the pond too, because the poodles at his house weren't too happy about having him around. And noo, it's not funny. My poor darling was stuck in the cold pond for God knows how long, before we saved him when we got back.

Cuts, Bruises and Sores & Dinner @ Helen and Michael's last Sunday

I feel so sore today and I mean literally sore. :( This is because the smart ass me went to play basketball yesterday with some rough experts, against the advice of Tubbs and Eileen. And I landed up sprawled on the floor with cuts and bruises on my right elbow, legs and a very sore right hip and left thumb after this egoistic China guy who goes by the name of Lambchops and Iceberg (minus the latter and former respectively) decided to slam me down to the floor when I tried to get the ball from him. And the worse part was he didn't even say sorry! I swear I wanted to kill him there and then :x, but I put on my nicest front and smiled as I walked back towards the side replying Tubbs, "Yeah I'm okay, I'm okay", trying to hold back the tears and ignore the immerse pain.

In consolation, at least Eileen, Zoon, Farah kept asking me if I was alright and a few of the others as well. They are all new students, Zoon is from Malaysia doing biotech and Farah is (I think) Malaysian who's a diplomat's daughter. Zoon was particular caring; he was rushing to his house to get tissue for me as I followed him to wash my wounds and he kept saying sorry even though it was not his fault. It made me feel like punching the china guy even more! :x Anyway, I should stop whingeing and get on to happier things. Here's the photos from our outing last Sunday. We sort of had a little farewell party for mummy.

Left to right: The "kids" playing on the trampoline; At the Dinner Table; Glorious Main courses and Desserts; Playing an Ancient Scandinavian game called Kupp - which is a cross between cricket, bocce ball, and jarts. It involves throwing blocks of wood at other blocks of wood in the attempt to knock them over. And I had to admit I was a blardy sore loser that day or maybe blame it on the hormones, I was displaying a bad front cursing and hitting Tubbs cause he was just so damn good in it. But oh well, everyone has a shitty attitude day. ;)

That's all for now, I'ma looking forward to try Eileen and Dominic's cooking tonight(with help from mum) and to enjoy my trip to Bendigo with Tubbs, Mum and Ying over the weekend. So I'll update photos and events on the trip next week. :D Keeping my fingers crossed and hoping tubby's foot gets well soon for the trip.