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! :)

Birthday Celebrations and Wedding Proposal 2010

So much has happened in the past few months and I finally found the time to update on the most significant one. ;p On 23 March this year, on my 2xth birthday, darling finally popped the question. It wasn't entirely the way that I had wanted it to be, but I'll give him some credit for it.

For some funny reason, I had a special feeling even before my birthday this year and decided to declare an earlier start for my birthday celebrations and it proved right as to why I had those feelings. :p So here goes

Fri 19th Mar: Had dinner with tubby and then went to Build-A-Bear workshop and I decided to make an Autumn Teddy Bear and I called her Cinnamon.
Sat 20 Mar: Special 3-Course meal at the Baths Restaurant in Brighton with tubby, James and a couple of his friends and we took a nice relaxing walk by the pier
Tues 23 Mar: Had Japanese lunch, went back to Build-A-Bear workshop and this time made a Rabbit for the coming easter and decided to name her Bailey. Dinner was at Rock Pool restaurant in Crown.

Yummy 3 -course meal at the Baths Restaurant in Brighton. These are some of the entrees and main courses that we chose. Dessert was Bread Pudding, Berries and Cream or Apple Crumble.

Nice relazing stroll along Brighton Beach after our enormous meal. Haha... a shot of James and Darling from the back

Me and darling. :)

Another shot of Brighton Beach with the Pier in the background. And there was this enclosed area where people can swim - called the Brighton Baths - duhh.. :p

Making a wish with my rabbit's heart before she is brought "to life".

Choosing clothing and footwear for Bailey. Boy it took more than an hour for me to decide. Darling was quite patient.

Teddy Cinnamon and Bunny Bailey. :) They even have birth certs!

The delicious and upper class dinner we had at Rock Pool Melbourne. The bill was quite hefty - which darling paid. hehe...

Outside Crown and the Yarra River by night - also where he dropped down on his knees for a brief moment and popped the question properly this time! (First was inside the restaurant. ) :P

A couple shot as we headed home for the night - and a very blissful and beaming me. :D

Hand in hand and ring on finger. :)

Now quite a bit has gone on for our wedding preps since then. We already have the venue and celebrants booked, gone to quite a few bridal shops to tryout gowns (for me!) and attended the recent Bridal Fair by Australian Bridal Service. Will update soon!

Meantime if you're interested, here's the rest of the album:
Birthday Celebrations and Proposal 2010

It's all about Tennis and BRTA Summer Team Monash

We finished our Tennis season and all Tennis Tournaments with Monash Uni T.C a couple of weeks ago. BRTA stands for the Bayside Regional Tennis Association. It's one of the district associations that holds competitions around victoria regions.

Penn, James, Me and Tubby were members of the Monash Uni T.C in Clayton since early 2009 and we joined some of their 1-day ladies singles/doubles and mix doubles competitions throughout the period. But our main highlight was playing in the BRTA Mix Team in Summer 09/10. Being the first time joining as a team and playing together, I would say we did pretty well making it into the finals series and coming in 3rd - though sadly in tennis, they only recognize winners and runners-up. But hey, coming in 3rd out of 8 teams was no easy deal either. ;)

We had so much fun during our practices and comps sessions. Here are some pics to share.

Entouca - artificial clay surface which we mostly played on, as most of the clubs were made.

Me doing a serve at one of our practice sessions.

"Coach" James giving us some advice. Penn's bro Phillip would join us

Penn returning a shot. Loving this shot by Photographer tubbs. :D

Jame-sy returning a forehand shot

Darling tubbyness doing a serve

Team Monash Uni on the last week of play before the final series.

Team Monash Uni on the day of the finals where we lost to Glen Huntly. (P.S Also the club Tubby and I are now playing for. LOL)

Tennis now continues for us on Wed nights social comps at King's Park T.C and Sat arvos in BRTA again but this time playing for Glen Huntly. :D Tennis is and will always be a big part of our lives. And thanks to darling again for introducing it to me in 2006.

CFA Urban Seniors Championship 2010 - Mildura: 5-8 March

The CFA had their "Firefighter's Olympics" AKA the CFA Championships in Mildura this year. And as part of the Online Services team, I'm always sent to be there to mend the Online Services booth in the Corporate Tents area. Our booth is there to promote the CFA member's website and the new forums and new sections and also to activate and assist members with their accounts.

Accomodation and meals were of course all provided as it was considered a working trip. We stayed at the Grand Hotel just next to Mildura Brewery. I'd say it was more fun than work and also a chance to visit a new place! Here are pics from over the 4 days.
Day 1: We arrived a day before the championships started and had time to wonder around. Dropped by the Ice-Creamary which of course sold ice-creams, finger food and sausages as well to grab lunch.
Day 1: Lucky to have been able to meet Tanya, one of my colleagues and tagged along with her dad and another colleague, the health and well-being officer and his wife to take a cruise down the murray river. Lovely breeze and relaxing trip.
Day 1: Crusie down murray river - pictures of other house boats all owned by people and some you can even rent them for the day or for a few nights! They are fully furnished.
Day 1: This is called the lock chamber. Because of the raised water levels on the other side, we had to enter this chamber and after it closes its doors, the chamber fills up with water to match the level on the other side before we continue on our journey.
The place which I slept in for the 3 nights. Wished I had brought tubby along haha.. Ample space to fit him as there was a double and single bed.
Day 2: Officially the first day of the championships and the first day we started "work". This is the Online Services and Public Affairs booth.
Day 2: Giving a member some assistance after activating his account. He was more interested in posing for a photo. lol.
Day 2: Inside the Online Services booth where one of our colleagues was so excited to spot Minister for Emergency Services, Bob Cameron standing nearby and so quickly shuffled us to take a photo with him.
One of the events of the championships: hose cart reeling and then fixing the pipes / couplings to the water pipe and the first to spray the target in the fastest time wins.
Every year, they will have the torchlight procession where firefighters march in the streets holding torchlights and their marching is also marked and counted towards their brigade scores.

Day 2 night: Just chilling with colleagues at the Mildura Brewery Bar. With Heather and Andria.
Sacred Heart Parish in Mildura. No matter where I am, and as long as it's a weekend, I have to find a church and go attend mass. :D
Day 3: Another hose and coupling event. This time they have to pull the hoses from the truck, fix them to the water pipes and activate them from the fire truck and which team has the fastest time in assembling all that and spraying the target wins.
Here you go, the target that they spray on. I got water on me a few times cause I was standing too near.. LOL..
And finally after a 3-day "olympics marathon" the brigade who won the most points out of all the events and won was Dandenong Brigade. This is their trophy presentation.

After a tiring but fun 4 days, we caught a (propeller plane yet again!) back to melbourne where I took the next day off just to sleep in and rest! :P Man I love my job sometimes esp. when it involves going away from the usual office mundane-ness!

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!