Chaotic bits and pieces of July and starting of new blogs

Okay July wasn't exactly one of the best months. Actually to say, June and July weren't exactly good months for us at all. First some idiot knocked into the back of my car in mid June and then I had to wait 5 weeks for the parts to arrive from Japan and another 2 weeks before I could send my car in. And now it's finally at the workshop for repairs.

The other major thing was that darling broke his leg while we were having a hit at tennis. We were just having our usual social hit on Tuesdays at Glen Huntly. He was moving to return a shot and the next thing I know, he suddenly just fell down on the court crying out in pain. He felt his ankle dislocate and clipped back, little did we know that he had broken his fibula as well.

Apart from that, life still goes on and there are little things here and there to smile and be happy about. Afterall, life is too short to be sad and full of worries. :D

Say hi to Baby Leo, my colleague Amber's baby boy who's 3 months old now. He's so tiny and you can just bundle him around your arms. She brought him in one day to visit us and he was just snoozing away. I bought him a little storybook teething toy.

Darling Jasper having a fun and happy day at Brighton Beach. It's an off-leash area for dogs that actually leads off to the sea. It was really cold and breezy that day but he couldn't care less and was just enjoying himself running and poking around.

Little furry white monster caught snoozing in the wardrobe again! He just likes to sleep in the wardrobe where my pyjamas and towels are in my Pooh Bear luggage bag. Maybe because it is comfy and soft. Haha...

Darling at Monash Hospital Clayton. We waited about 4 hours that night when he broke his leg just to see the doctor and get his leg plastered up! And also to be disappointingly told that the break was quite major and he had to have an operation and couldn't go home for the night.

Went to watch Mary Poppins Musical with Dan bro and his church friends on 23 July. We had bought the tickets a couple of months ago. This is the outside of Her Majesty's theatre, we were walking there after dinner just up the street.

The view from our seats. We were seated in the upper dress circles and the view was not too bad though we weren't really near the stage. The musical was just fantastical and awesome and I would definitely watch it again if given the chance! :)

And as usual, I couldn't miss getting souvenirs and the program book from the musical. Lucky I could fit a Size 14 Girls "Practically Perfect" Tee in pink - my favourite colour! And the lapel pin is now hanging from my tennis bag! :)
Darling again here at Dandenong Hospital last week. This was the night just after his operation to put screws and metal plates in. It really hurts to see him like that and I really pray for him to recover soon so we can go out and do things together again.

Till then, mum's coming over and arriving this weekend! Can't wait to see her again and to do stuff together! Wedding plans have halted for the moment since Tubby broke his leg. But I am in the midst of creating a wedding blog to capture all our wedding preps and also Dan bro and I are setting up a toy blog where we will be selling toys. Hope to get them out there soon!

RSPCA Million Paws Walk 2010 and a Night of Fun and Games

This year we finally managed to attend the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) Million Paws Walk held at Albert Park. It was a day of fun, competitions and walking to raise funds for the RSPCA to aid in their care of homeless animals. Every year, thousands of animals especially dogs are abandon by their owners and the shelter takes them in and cares for them until someone adopts them.

The walk started at 10am where everyone will walk around the whole of Albert Lake. We kinda arived a bit late and the walk had already started! Check out all the people with their pooches!

"Cup Cake Day" Booth. A day where people baked cup cakes to sell in the city to raise funds for the RSPCA. You can register yourself or your group there at the booth and I bet there were yummy free cupcakes there too!

Four really fluffy, big and adorable Samoyed dogs and their owners who probably share the same love for that breed stopped to have a chat about their fluffy cuties...

And of course there must be the RSPCA Shop selling merchandize like T-Shirts, Tops, Jumpers, Bags, Caps, Stationary and a whole load of stuff for your furry friends too.

$25 gets you a hydro bath - in which the funds also go in the contribution of raising funds for the RSPCA. We had to give Jasper a bath, he was so filty after walking around in the wet morning! You can see he wasn't a happy camper!

Back home at night, he was certainly sleepy and tired after a long and enjoyable day for him. :P

Recently I managed to find a long lost high school friend via facebook and realised that she is living and working in Melbourne! After 11 long years, we finally met up a few weeks ago with King Yen another high school mate. And of course we stayed in touch after that and this was another of our outings where we introduced her to Kal (who's Mr. Bachelor now). ;)

Dinner at the Fish Seafood Grill Restaurant in Docklands. We shared a mix seafood platter which consists of crabs, scallops, prawns, crayfish, oysters and fish! Yummer-licious!

The boys: Dan, Kal and Tubby - not knowing where to start with the huge Seafood platter!

And of course like every group outings, a group shot is a must! Ammie was Daniel's date for the night! haha!

Then after dinner we head on to the Cube Boardgames Cafe on Lygon Street. We started with a good old game of Uno Jenga!!!

Diana was terrified that the tower was so gonna topple on her and after every move, she crept away from the table! :p

And I must say after quite a few rounds, we did pretty well in piling the blocks until Daniel decided to topple it!!!

Next we went on to a game called "Who's that?", recommended by Kal's friend who's one of the owners of the shop. Basically you had to choose 5 characteristics of the person and guess from A to E which is their top priority to the least.

Ammie got full marks score for tubby while I only got 2, can you believe it? LOL. And that ended a night of fun and games which brought us back to childhood. Defnitely fun and should be done again! :)

Chinese New Year 2010 & another visit to Miss Marples.

This year was yet another Chinese New Year celebrated overseas. I think ever since I came to Melbourne to study and stayed on to work, spending chinese new year back home in Malaysia is hard especially since where I'm working now, mid Jan to mid Feb are like the most fire-prone periods where the CFA gets really busy and so taking leave is almost impossible.

But lucky over the years, we've made quite a few good friends here who are also around during the this festive period and so we met up for our own reunion dinner at Ocean King restaurant in Glen Waverley on the first day of chinese new year which also happened to fall on the same day as Valentine's Day this year! 14 Feb 2010!

The view from our side... :D

Everyone digging into the yummy food... Crocodile meat, fish, prok ribs, egg plant etc...

The group of us that day and thoughful Daniel bought each of us a rose for Vday.

After that, some of us decided to head over to Crown and for the first time we actually bothered to go there, I was pretty fascinated and amazed at how CNY is much celebrated what with all the stalls of food lined up outside Crown along the Yarra River.

Check out the walkway outside Crown decorated with chinese lanterns and the crowd!

Didn't know they performed chinese opera there as well! Or cantonese opera to be more precise!

Super duper happy to find my favourite CNY treat Bak Kua there as well. Which is known as Pork / Beef jerky in english.

Animated dragon display inside Crown Promenade. Lucky to be able to catch the performance time.

Lion dance performance by the CYSM (Chinese Youth Society of Melbourne)

Dragon dance by CYSM (Chinese Youth Society of Melbourne)

Finale of the Lion and Dragon dance performance CYSM (Chinese Youth Society of Melbourne)

Darling and I also decided to take CNY day 2 off just for a break and we bundled Jasper and us trio went up to Dandenong's. Even on a week day, there was a line up outside for table. They don't take bookings and people have to line up and wait. Lucky us, we didn't have to wait too long that day.

Inside of Miss Marples, named after famous detective Miss Marples herself in the background.

The yummy scones with cream and jam - their house specialty. Can never have enough!

Cutie darling Jasper was quite happy with his walk that day!

Vote for Jasper to be the new face of Advocate Parasite Protection!

Hi people, Advocate, Australia's No.1 Parasite and Flea protection is looking for a dog and cat to be the new face of their advertising campaign. So please help to vote for Jasper and make him the new face of Advocate!

If we get anything we'll share it with everyone of you who clicked to vote! :) Go visit Jasper's page and click on the blue button to vote for him. Also click on Jasper's pictures tab and click on the "thumbs up" icon to vote for his photos. Every vote on every picture counts, so please try and vote for all.

If you join as a member of the site, you can just easily vote but if you're a visitor, you'll need to enter the scrambled letters in the pop-up window and hit enter to vote. A bit of a hassle I know, so do it when you're free. Thank you!

Click here to vote for Jasper!

For Jasper MEMBER OF THE Dog PARTY Click here to vote for Jasper at VoteMyPet.com.au

xoxo, Jasper (with lots of hugs and licks!)

Meet Ralphy the Silky Terrier/Chi huahua, Jasper's new friend...

Last year if you recall, when tubby and I decided to get another dog, we adopted Baxter, an 8-month old Maltese/Shih Tzu from a blond lady. Anyway that didn't work out and the dog was adopted by someone else a few weeks later and you can read the full story here if you're interested. So anyway after that event, we discussed that there wasn't gonna be any new dog until we buy our own place in the next year or so.

But then, me being all bored at work one day, I started looking at ads on the trading post again. It was there I found out about Puppy Centre, kinda like a puppy warehouse at Ringwood, in the eastern suburbs. That Saturday, 28 March, we promised ourselves that we were only going there to have a look and not decide on anything. But I think we or (more me) didn't keep the promise and we went home with Ralphy! He's a Silky Terrier/Chi hua hua mix and is currently about 11 weeks old. As we had bad experieces with an adopted dog, so we decided to go back to getting a puppy this time. So meet Ralphy:

All cuddled up nicely in between the pillow and tubby's stomach. :p

Trying to be naughty and biting my slippers.

Super sleepy after a "a hard days of running around and playing".

He doesn't pose too well (yet), so had to carry him and attract him with the phone.

So far the toilet-training is going okay. He does have his favourite spots and initially we put the training pads on those places as well. But then we realised that in order to train him properly, it should be teaching him to do his business wherever the training pads are and NOT where he likes to do it. He usually follows Jasper and does his pooping at the same place, but the hard part is his peeing, he still does it anywhere he deems fit sometimes and very rarely at the training pad.

Tubby figured that it was easier to train Jasper because Jas only had a small place to run around (we were hiding him in the South Units on residences at that time, heehee! :p) at that time. But Ralphy has too big an area to run about this time. In the day when we're not home, he has a caged area and he does his business on the training pads. It's only when we're home and let him out then he likes to do his peeing around places. But at least as compared to the adopted dog, Ralphy's like an angel really. It just takes time to get him properly trained and I hope, with patience, he will be grow up to be as smart as his brother, Jasper. :)

Everyday is Valentine's Day if you love the right one. And the ups and downs of Tennis...

Howdy everyone, my "sunshine" is back and thanks to the dear encouragement of my dear girls and cousin, I feel much better regarding the parent issue in the previous post. Anyway hoped everyone had a great Valentine's day both singles and couples as it's not just a day about couples in love, it's also about showing your love to your family and best friends. ;) Darling and I spent the day catching up with each other since he just came back from Singapore the day before. We did some shopping in Southland and then bought food back for a home-cooked candle light dinner.

Nothing else beats a nice home-cooked dinner prepared by the charming and loving chef, and with the extra touch of the candles in their vintage candle holders which I got as a farewell gift from my previous company.

And a close-up of the nice pan-fried salmon with capers, broccoli and grilled tomatoes with cheese. Mmmnnn yummy, and even darling Jasper had his royal taster's role fulfilled by having some of the food as well. :D

After that, we rented a movie to watch on Foxtel: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Honestly I much prefer the previous ones, this latest one was just lame. I mean flying saucers and aliens? Whatever happened to the good old ancient artifacts and mythology? Have plot writers just run out of good ideas already? Speaking of which I also watched Bride Wars with a colleague a week ago. That was a chick flick alright but still it was funny and had a good storyline and I especially love the ending that two best friends didn't fall out because their plotting against each other before the wedding. But that plotting actually helped one of them figured out that her husband-to-be really wasn't "the one". Anyway it's one good movie to catch with your girlfriends and you can ogle at the Tiffany ring and Vera Wang gown. :p

On to another topic: Tennis; my favourite sport. As you might know I have been playing since end 2006 and have joined some local comps and stuff in Gippsland. When we first moved down to Melbourne, my ex coach recommended me to a coach he knew at Nottinghill tennis club in Glen Waverley. Now it all started out fine at first (with the coaching I mean). But then because I wasn't "as important" as the wannabe kid star players, the coach kept changing my time slots and then eventually passed me on to his son. Then his son had some emotional problems while moving house and stopped contacting me. I thus had to contact the father again and he fitted me in one of his "precious time slot".

So all seemed fine until the weeks near Christmas when I had to skip a lesson or two as I wanted to spend more time with mum. Mr Coach then got unhappy and said I should just keep my coaching lessons on a casual basis. And I thought to myself. "What a petty and arrogant person!". And so I let the matter rest and thought I'll contact him again in the new year. And guess what? Mr Petty refuses to answer my call or sms. I couldn't be bothered anymore. Tennis may be my love, but that doesn't mean I have to beg someone for it. There are heaps other better coaches out there who are willing to teach whoever wants to excel.

And so darling and I have been looking around for other tennis clubs to join since then. When he bought a new racket for himself over the weekend, we decided to try out the clay courts near our place. I have always only ever played on hard courts and this was my first time in the clay court. Gotta say play in a clay court is certainly much different that in a hard court. The balls are slower and the ball can suddenly change direction depending on how it hits the clay.

Clay Court - usually made of crushed stone or brick. Cheaper and faster to build but more expensive to maintain as they need to be rolled over to preserve flatness and spray water on it before and after play.

Hard Court - Basically just hard concrete but more expensive as you have to bring in special concrete to build the courts, but cheaper to maintain.

At the end of the 1 1/2 hour on Valentine's day evening, we decided that was the first and last time we're gonna play on clay courts. No doubt it was also fun, but I wasn't used to it and slide and fell to the floor on my bum once and Darling just stood there laughing at me. :\ But haha that wasn't the main reason; when we finally finished playing, our shoes and outfits were all reddish brown! All the sliding and running for the balls had turned us into dirty, dusty bums. I had to go home and scrub off the stains of our shoes and clothes like hell and figured, "No I wouldn't want to be doing this all the time". :p I just found out about the Hard courts at the Monash Clayton campus today and made an enquiry. So darling's accompanying me for a lesson with the new coach this friday (who happens to be an Asian who's Singaporean, haha). I just hope everything turns out better this time. :)

Mooncake festival gathering, Jasper's got a facebook account and thoughts on the Mummy 3.

Darling and I took a long drive back to Gippsland two weekends ago for Mooncake / Lantern Festival or which is also known in chinese terms as "Zhong Qiu Jie". Boy I think it felt like ages since we went back and as usual I slept all the way. For some funny reason, the ride seemed pretty fast. Maybe because Jasper and I were sleeping most of the way leaving poor tubby to drive. :D It was a short but good trip and if only someone didn't want to keep rushing home for the Man Utd. match, we probably could have stayed longed. Anyway we did the usuals:

The food; nothing fancy, just nice home cook food and some char siew and siew yoke which Lex/Weichao brought from city. And Ammie made her yummuy dumplings again.

And of course after every meal at every gathering, there's the "Group Shot". Though some of them like Reshme, Yihorng, Ivy hadn't arrived yet. *ssshhhh* it was because they were only invited for the lantern walk and not dinner. :p

And here's all the preety ladies in waiting with their pretty lanterns all in a row, getting ready to go for the lantern walk in the park. Someone said it looked like a beauty pageant. ;)

Back to the days of childhood, lighting lanterns and taking a walk with them. Irritatingly the "birthday" candles went off really fast and halfway throughout, everyone had to light new candles. We used to use those thickier candles when we were small, they were actually specially made for the lanterns and they fitted in the metal holder nicely too.

And another proper group shot with everyone at Glen Donald Park (minus Ben cause he was taking the photo). Imagine the Ang Mohs walking past us and giving us the weird look. If you were looking from afar, I swear you'd think there are colourful lights floating by themselves. Because with that dim moonlight that night, the lighted lanterns were the only thing you could see. :o

And of course we had to have mooncakes since it IS mooncake festival. This was the "higher" quality mooncake, so there was only 4 for like 18 of us! So everyone got about a slice each except for the greedy me who had 2 because it was offered to me anyway mah. :P Yum

Alright and that is the end of the Mooncake extravaganza. The full album is on facebook.

Now if anyone does not know yet, Jasper has a FACEBOOK account now! Dom was the clown who decided to create one for him. I know he was pestering me for ages, but I was just too lazy. So all you Jasper fans, dog-lovers or just people who find our white furry prince cute, you can add him as a friend.

P.S: Dom and I have shared rights to the account. So if you see any long-winded intellectual stuff written, that's from him. Any short, sweet and simple things written is from me. And yeah Jasper does "reply" your messages. I showed him his facebook account that night and he gave the screen a lick... haha silly cute lovable honey buns. :)

Anyway we also went to watch the Mummy 3 - Tomb of the Dragon Emperor over the weekend. Got to say 1 and 2 were better. The 3rd one sort of had not much depth into the storyline and 3/4 s of the movie was just really good CGI. And please... the wife of Brendan Fraser was so much more hotter than this one who tried to put on a fake british accent. Also for a couple who has an 18-20 year old son, they didn't seem like they have aged much over the past 20 years. :\

I also didn't like the fact that they took part of China's history and change it. Ancient Chinese history has always been one of my favourite and highly appreciated. So yeah too much discrepancies in the story like how the Terracotta warriors came about. And how can the 2000 year old witch and her daughter speak english?! :o Even if they did speak to the angmohs in English, they would be more comfortable to speak to each other in mandarin. Thank God they didn't make the mummy speak English too, I would have fainted.