Happy Easter 2016

Let's not get confused. Easter happened last month and I am behind in my blog, paiseh. So back blogging Easter now.

I do so love my new Foodie filter. Look at those buns! They looked so delicious. Our office celebrates Easter every year in conjunction with fundraising event. I didn't realize that only our branch doing it. All other branches including our head office in Sydney doesn't celebrate it. This makes me appreciate our social committee more.

Every year without fail, we will have raisins, chocolate and plain ones. This year I saw reduced volumes. Guess a lot of health conscious people and leftovers are just thrown away.

Plain ones are my favorites cause I don't like chocolate, nor do I like raisins - too sweet. Unfortunately not many people like plain ones and our Office Admin is thinking of discontinuing it. Lucky I am quite chummy with her so I asked her to reduce it instead.

Hopefully she will take in my suggestion. The best way to eat hot cross buns is with butter. Last few years we had margarine while Nite's office supply individual butter. This year they finally serve Western spreadable butter. JOY! Informed Nite smugly of this upgrade.

She told me her company cut and pre-spread butter siap siap for this year. Cis.....

Barefoot bowl

I have heard of bowling, lawn bowl and now there is barefoot bowl which if you ask me is just lawn bowl without shoes.

It's a team building event for our department. Second attempt as the first one was cancelled due to bad weather. At first I was reluctant to go but I am keen to try something new.

Barefoot balls look like this. It has a comfortable weight on your hands and has a softball like texture. Each player gets 2 balls.

This is the lane and this is the admin teaching us how to play. He is standing on the bowling pad. When you bowl one feet must be on this pad. There is a small golf size ball near his feet. Before you start, you must roll that golf ball down the lawn. Everyone needs to attempt to roll their ball as close as possible to the white golf ball without touching it. The one who has his ball closest to the golf ball wins. Once everyone finish rolling, the group walks to the opposite end and start it all over again. I don't know how are points counted nor how many rounds you must play. We just fooled around without real competition.

Yes you can definitely smack your opponent's ball out so first to roll is not necessarily the best. It is also harder to roll a straight ball than you think, even the white golf one. It is actually harder to roll a small ball than a big ball on the lawn. 

All in all it was quite a fun game though a few people grew bored after 2 - 3 rounds. The grass is nice. Almost look like fake if not for the ants. 

Did I mention I was the overall winner? Not by skill, but sheer luck really. Someone knock my ball close haha. So close it was like a finger width away from the golf ball. For some reason I don't have that photo in my computer. Disappointing. I shall upload it as soon.

I don't see this will be my hobby even in retirement but I think it is fun for just the experience of it.

Throwback: Christmas Dinner

This year's Christmas dinner was interesting. It's the first Christmas dinner I had at Auntie's house as a guest. Naturally as a guest, Nite is not invited anymore. Aunt also didn't invite Bits. Not surprised as Aunt is very particular with relations and social status. Bits, although is my significant other, is a male that has no connection with Aunt - hence not invited. I explained to Bits and he doesn't seem perturbed. Hopefully he doesn't feel slighted. This year, Cousin Sis and her boyfriend came back to celebrate with the family. Auntie was over the moon. However I didn't expect the awkward conversation that follows with Cousin Sis's boyfriend (BF)

BF : Hey where is him?

Me: Who him? (~ pretending I don't know what he is talking about)

BF : Bits. Why didn't he come?

Me: Ah..... (keep eating~)

Aunt: I didn't invite him. I will invite him when he is married to Piggy.

Talk about minefield, guess Cousin Sis's boyfriend never expect to step on that one haha....

Anyway I already knew Aunt would not invite Bits anyway so I planned a mini Christmas celebration with him - not that he celebrates it.

As there is just 2 of us, the menu is really simple

Cheese board with Olives and some semi dried tomatoes to tease the palate

Main course of stuffed turkey breast wrapped in bacon with brown rice salad (pine nuts, with currants boil in red vine vinegar) and roasted potatoes

Dessert of panna cotta

Tasty? Bits really loved it. Although I cooked everything single handedly, there some facts that needs to be shared for transparency...heh heh

1. The turkey was bought from Aldi, marinated and stuffed.
2. The panna cotta failled during Christmas, the one in the photo was a second successful try. 
3. Roast potato is Jamie Oliver's recipe. It was a total failure. This is my second failed attempt at roasting potatoes. How hard can it be to roast potatoes? 
4. It is taking awfully long to finish the cheese. There are still some left in my fridge.

Ok moving on.... Despite point 1,2, 3, I rate it a successful first try :) Maybe next year I can spread my wings even more and invite a bigger crowd.

We shall see..

Maslenitsa in Melbourne

Early in our relationship, I always bug Bits to share a bit more on his culture. Yes, I can google as much as I want but it is more fun learning it from him and get his perspective.

In February, he told me there will be an important Slavic festival called Maslenitsa. It has close relationship to his culture but his family does not celebrate it. In fact his family does not celebrate much of anything, very cost saving. So without further ado, we make it a date.

This is a significant figure in the festival. It is the Lady Maslenistsa. I am quite glad I took a photo for at the end of the festival she was gone! There was also some performance in the hall when we arrive. It was interesting enough to distract me from the food.

They perform a few traditional dances and sang in Russian of course. Though I had no idea what they were singing but I enjoyed it. We stayed a bit but stomach calls. So of we went for food.

During the festival, if one observed it strictly, you are to abstained from all manner of meat. However, I doubt a festival without meat will be a success hahaha. Anyway no complains from me as you can see from my plate. Nothing smells tastier than sausage grilling on a spring day.

If I have any complains, it is that they do not provide any table and chairs to eat comfortably. As you can see this is no finger food nor easily eaten while walking or standing up.

Will I go to this festival again.....um.... not really. But if you want the cultural experience, I recommend it.

Melbourne Open Day 2015 Part 2

The second building and we barely (we were in the last group) made it is the Council House. The attraction is the green concept. It's more expensive to build, yes, but it's eco friendly. If only all entrepreneurs take in consideration of the environment all the time. It is a building that harness the elements around it for cooling and to a certain extent heating. Imagine a building with no air conditioning and just uses the difference between temperatures to cool down the building and retain the coolness. The head architecture said the temperature is always maintained at 23 degrees.

Hot air will get churned out by this big turbines. The whole thing kinda reminds me of Casa Mila in Barcelona.

The turbine area has been made into an open garden/canteen. It would be lovely to have lunch here in spring and autumn. Not summer unless you like big ugly flies.

These are heater coils that take heat generated from the building and out. The cement ceiling traps cold air for summer. In winter, these coils will warm up the building as well.

This is the view from the roof garden where the wind turbines are. Beautiful yeah?

We spend a total of 30 minutes here before we left. Would love to stay longer but the crowd is just massive!

Melbourne Open Day 2015 Part 1

I think every city should do this. Kudos to the Melbourne government for arranging it. Over this weekend, several buildings around Melbourne will be open for visitation and not because there was some celebration like Raya. This is merely to introduce Melbourne I guess. We are talking about buildings that don't usually open to the public - so it is pretty awesome. Thanks to Nite for suggesting this as a good date outing. It was!

I suggested to Bits and he put together a list of nine buildings. Of course that is impossible. So we shortlisted to 4. Even then we only manage to see 2.5. Main reason was we only start our visitation at 1.00pm. There were queues on the good ones. The cream of the crop like Flinders Station or Melbourne Central, you can only go in with reservation which Nite told me was full within the first hour of registeration. I sure hope next year I can go see it. Anyway we end up visiting :-

• The Limelight Studio and Salvation Army Heritage Center
• Council House - CH2
• Townhall - actually I won't even consider this a tour. We spend a total of 15 minutes in it only

The one we missed was the Russell Sub station. Nite queued for ages to get it. I bet it's really cool. We also ended up queuing almost an hour to see the Limelight Studio. It's very interesting to note the first motion picture was produced here (not sure if I got my facts correct) and it was a religious movie. A shame it was also lost and never found.

These people recognize really early that picture and sound is a far more interesting way to spread the gospel rather than just preaching. And back in the days, they use colour plates + dialogue. All the plates were hand colored. Look how intricate it is. This photo is obviously enlarged. The actual size is just about the size of a coaster.

I think the overall tour was just about 1/2 hour. No luxury of leisure browsing as there are just too many people, not to mention we need to rush to the next location which was the sub station that we eventually had to miss.

To be continued....

Happy Birthday to me!

And l have scheduled posts again! WIN WIN eh...

So it's time again for my birthday. This year I celebrated it at home with family. Can't really remember when is the last time I celebrated birthday with family. I went back for Cousin's wedding and she was apologetic that it's my birthday as well. Silly girl. She couldn't time it better.

Nite asked if I want to do it with her before or after. Since Bits wants to celebrate it after, the before is open for Nite. We had the most wonderful brunch at Hopetoun again. It's turning out to be one of my favorite eatery of all times in Melbourne. Since Nite took such nice photos of my first birthday cake, head over to her blog to read it up.

Next up is Moo and the Lion City folks. I must said I miss having multiple birthday celebrations but I am beginning to have enough groupings in Koala land to achieve that. Ha ha ha! That doesn't sound good for my waist though.

This birthday cake is actually a surprise. I would be just as happy for the company but they spring a cake on me! And we also have a double birthday.

When I got home, family got me this cheese cake. Coincidentally Cousin also got me a huge ice cream cake. It brought me back to my childhood where ice cream cake was just getting popular and it's really expensive to buy one. But parents got me one when we can financially afford it. It was a memorable birthday. Since we had Cousin's cake, there was really no space for this little one until the next day.

The final celebration was with Bits who took me to Bistro Vue, a restaurant under Shannon Bennett. There will be a post late. For now I will share the best creme brulee. It's actually one of the easiest dessert but because it is so easy, stuffed ups are easy to spot. This one is perfect. What a way to complete my birthday celebration.

Another few more it will be the big 40! What would I do?? Hm......

A date with Qian Long

Or his remains.... Thanks to Nite who is forever supportive of my love life, I get to know about Qian Long's exhibit is in town so as we speak. It's exactly the kind of stuff that Bits would love and guess what..East meets West again! By the way Nite said she get to know from googling something totally unrelated. Hm....

So on one fine Saturday (Saturday is date day), we find ourselves here again. We immediately reminisce the first time we met, here about a year ago!

2 things are different now from the first time. We are no longer 2 strangers trying to see if our stars align. We are now making effort to align it. Second I told Bits, do not go back to that cafe again, the food is not filing. He had a good laugh and said I should put healthy appetite in my e-harmony 'resume'. I don't think that is an attractive feature.

Bits, anticipating there will be a crush even got into the city earlier to get tickets. It was a pleasant surprise and something I never expected. Looks like my kiasu nature is rubbing off on him haha. It was a good exhibit and took us 1.5 hours to finish even with slow walking, gazing (at artifacts), reading so it wasn't a really big one. But then I think it is generous already given they are all borrowed from China.

After the exhibit, Bits took me to the mural hall. At first glance, they was nothing in the hall except carpet and a lot of people lying down. Then you look up and your jaw drops.

Then I had to lie down so that I don't get neck crick and of course Bits joined me. What an amazing piece of art and all for free.

Drop by for a quick lie in if you have time.

A different CNY

There is a first time for everything and this year, it is my first time celebrating away from all blood relation and working to boot! Luckily Nite is opening her house for me as she is also celebrating on her own. So 2 makes a family. She also invited Bits, bless her.

Now that we've decided that we will have our own celebration, the next logical thing is to talk about what to eat. CNY is never complete without the sengkuang dish I love so much.

Note to self: Get recipe from Mum

It can also be a type of salad for Bits as you can eat it wrapped with lettuce. Nite will also be making the family spring rolls. Both need sengkuang ingredients which I have take it upon myself to procure. Please let there be sengkuang in the Asian Grocers!

This year will be the ram year, which is mum's zodiac sign. It is also known as Goat or Sheep year - confusing as we all know goat and sheep is different. Goat plural is goats and sheep plural is sheep.

Happy Chinese New Year!!

more importantly...

Sisters, reminds those relatives that I am still alive, single and save me the ang pows

Fifty shades of red

My Note 3 comes with the swipe type function. It means instead of pressing the keyboard, you can just swipe around it and the phone will make a smart guess. But to do that you will need to turn on the smart keyboard prediction. You might be surprise to know it was never turned on for me as I like to type local lingo/slang and the auto correct will just be in the way.

But I am intrigue with the swipe function enough to want to use it. Hence I turned on the auto prediction. Since then I always feel it is trying to do me in. The latest correction had me and Bits up in tears of laughter and additional embarrassment for me.

Blue is me 

Should I just turn the bloody thing off?

Happy New Year 2015

First blog in 2015 and where am I? Stuck in a taxi on the North South Highway flying back to Ipoh. If all goes to plan I should be in Bali for the last few days of my 2014. I think it will be my first time celebrating New Year in a cab. I only hope I am not Miss Grumpy pants or snoring my way.

So 2014 marks my 2.5 years in Koala Land. I am still here making a decent living so it means all went well in 2014. Any regrets? Probably one or two that I can't remember now.

Anything I want to repeat? Probably the holidays. That is the first thing that comes to mind mainly because Uncle has been harping on it, I traveled a lot and all of it with Nite so to know where I went, head over to her blog here. I will blog it eventually, maybe but at least she has the hard useful facts where else it's just crap here.

There was success this time with the plants, so I am pleased. I have also started some investing, well, one went really bad but well, it made me wiser. All part of learning. I also signed up for an online herbal class. It's still at lesson one. I hope they haven't killed my membership on that one.

My blog also picked up > 100 visitors consistently - I am still undecided how I feel about it. I also picked up a boyfriend, something I am pretty happy about.

So all in all a pretty satisfying year personally, though globally it wasn't very good with MH370 still lost in the ocean, Crimea lost to Ukraine and our state government lost to Labor. Don't ask uncle about it. You will never hear the end of it. Before this turns into ala Kenny yearly review blog I better end it with a

Happy New Year to all

See you all in 2015

Merry Christmas 2014

So fast and it's the time again to spend lots of money buying presents for people. They should adopt the Chinese way, only married couples gives present to singles, HO HO HO!

Although I know Christmas is in December, it still gives me a kick to go out one day and find that the Christmas Deco is up. Nothing like Christmas Deco to officiate Christmas buying frenzy. 

And as usual I will spend some money on charity, supporting the Safe House for abuse women and kids. Last year they wanted toiletries and this year they wanted toys for kids and books for adolescents. I went on rampage.

The books are all from Cousin Bro, he out-grown his Twilight phase and some other kids will benefit from it. It took me a whole day to wrap everything up and a strained right arm to get everything to my office in a big giant Ikea Bag. Have to keep telling myself, "it's for charity, it's for charity, it's for charity..."

I hope it is worth it and some kids will be happy this Christmas.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Facebook and LinkedIn scammers

A few days ago got an email from Facebook saying....

And yesterday another email from LinkedIn saying....

Any average person will panic on the first one and wonder on the second one. Both emails looked pretty genuine from the onset. I can tell you I clicked the link on the first one, jumping into panic mode then abandon before it can load and straightway run virus scan and delete all temporary files. But it could be luck that this is an identity thef email rather than virus infecting. Anyway to be safe, I even changed my facebook password.

The second one tipped me off right away because my LinkedIn account was not link to this email. I have a different email. So it pays to spread your stuff around. I have at least 5 email accounts for different usages.

To double checked this, I also hover my mouse on the sender and check the email address. As suspected, they have gibberish domain. Thus I immediately deleted both emails. Then it occurred to me, average users like you who is reading my blogs might be susceptible as well. 

Thus be very careful with such emails and you would want to read these 2 websites on suspicious emails handling for Facebook and LinkedIn . They even contain instructions on how to report such scams to them which I already did. 

Be aware, scammers are everywhere and these operated on a higher intellectual level than my dating scammer. Remember the Doc? Social networking websites are the worst. Surf Smart.

Jump High

There is a reason you only see little kids and teenagers here. One of the 'wild things' Cousin Sis want to do on her 30th birthday is do a jump here. You guys are lucky that I only want to sing K and eat on my birthday.

Jump Factory/Trampoline Jump is one of the latest trend that hit our town. They are a couple of franchise here and the one we went is Jump as it's just in the neighborhood. Cousin Sis must have take this as a sign.

It's a good way to recycle a factory

The entry price is not cheap and you need to book beforehand. Needless to say this is a group activity, though no one will ban you if you want to come alone. You just look weird jumping by yourself. The price is not cheap either and there is no free drinks. Sometimes you wonder why would I want to pay $10 to jump in some refurbished warehouse when I can do the same on my bed. You also need to buy a pair of special socks with extra grip. You can recycle your previous pair.

This is the reason why. Foam pool! Build on top of trampolines, they are a few section with different themes. Foam beds, free style jumping, slam dunk lanes. Each session is about 1 hour. It may seemed short but trust me, 1 hour is more than enough.

I blame it on age that makes me so cautious with the jumping, although everything is well padded and they do take safety seriously here, I just don't dare to jump that high thus it is no different than jumping on my bed. It is highly enjoyable if you can let go of the fear that you will land and twist your ankle or break your neck.

Needless to say Cousin Bro is a pro and I took a lot of good shots of him. Unfortunately the same can't be said for him. A lot of my photos end up unflattering which I shall refrain from posting here.

It is a good place to send your energetic kids. At the end of the day, surprisingly, my core muscles and knees hurt. Who would have thought you use core muscles in jumps?

Urban Escape City

Note City not Room. Ever since I spotted Escape Room, the real life edition in Bolehland, I have always wanted to do it. Imagine my joy when I saw Groupon has an offer. So happy was I, that I didn't notice it was Escape City and not the Escape Room Franchise. So I blur blur bought and two others namely Nite and Bro blur blur joined as well.

If you played the virtual escape room before, I don't need to say anymore, if not, click on link to have a go. Generally it's a first player game and you are in a locked room. There are clues all over the room and you need figure them out to find the final key to unlock the room. I do enjoy a good detective game hahaha...

The whole establishment had a dodgy feel to it. First there is no offical website. Then upon arrival, we found locked doors with a notice to call a number. Owner of number was actually the Ramen Shop on 2nd floor and not even the actual owner. For a second I thought we have been conned! After almost 15 minutes of frantic dialing, we finally got a SMS ' Our appointment will be delayed one hour due to their staff MC'. Well at least it's not a con. Since we've already paid for it, we adjourned to the pancake house next door for some sweet therapy.

Thanks to this sweet therapy we are in less feral mode when we reach the office. There are a couple of options but we have no choice as the other rooms are occupied. After briefing us the rules we were sent into this room and off we go!

The digital clock is not part of the prop, it is our timer.

In many ways it differs from the virtual game - we were told where is the start which actually makes things easier. We were also given a panic button which we eventually used and there are 2 parts of the problem. Deduce the mystery and find the key to escape this room. You don't get that in the virtual version. Despite all the earlier adversities, we did had great fun trying to solve to mystery. It felt great being able to trash a place without thinking of the clean up. We left no sofa un-turned no books un-flipped. Snacks and drinks were provided after the session but that's part of our package. I am not sure if you need to pay for it separately.

I highly recommend you have at least 3 people if you want to try this to guarantee a room to yourself. Otherwise you might be paired up with random groups that could results in cat fights. I also think this is a good couple's outing (double dates) but then, like Amazing Race, this can make or break your relationship.

If you wondered if we solve the puzzle in time.... the answer is, Hell yeah! Bro said,' With your organized mind and my creativity, there is no room we cannot escape.'

Dunno about that, but I am glad it ended on a high note.

New Plants for Spring 2014 - IV

The first thing I got back from Japan is check on my blooms and how are they?

Look at my babies, they are flourishing!! Go green thumbs... it comes from my mother's side as my uncle has it too! And of course the strategy of getting a resilient plant is the right one too.

I also think Churro's shit must be very potent as only the Portulaca is flowering nicely. The other pot...not even a bud. Maybe I should get Churro to dig this plot up and lay some golden poops to make the flowers bloom in this pot.

Aunt's 60th Birthday

I am on a roll to blog up all my posts so that I can file the pictures away. The more I blog the sleepier I get. Either my blogs are boring or the weather is good. I go with the weather.

Milestone birthdays are big thing here. Not just 50th or 60th but even from 20th onward. We just finish celebrating Aunt's 60th birthday. It's an official 8 course menu with printed name cards on plates. Not one to have a flashy party, it was a quiet tasty affair with 2 tables only. We take our food seriously.

I can't said I like the cold platter but all the rest of the food is simply amazing. As the celebration day was not on the actual birthday and Aunt pantang on blowing birthday cake twice, she ordered the longevity pau. It's on the house too so Aunt was very pleased. Helps that the owner likes customer to host events in his restaurant. It brings good karma.

I haven't had longevity pao in the longest time. It is very nostalgic and Cousin Bro had never had one in his life. I told him the bun brings good luck. I decided to do a photobook for Aunt and top it up with Mornington Peninsula voucher. She liked my present best. Since then I have gone on rampage and bought 3 more groupon vouchers. Must stop letting compliments get to my head.

Happy Birthday Aunt!

New Plants for Spring 2014 - III

While re-organzing my compartments, I found a packet of chives seeds together with my facial freebies. It was a strange compartment to be in, stranger I can't remember when I bought it. Due to my recent successes, I thought I'd further push my luck and try my hand at chives. We don't have chives in the garden anyway.

So the instruction said, plants seeds 20 cm apart or something with 5mm depth. I look at my pots, took a handful and sprinkle them in. You'd agree it's impossible to do it in these pots.

After anxiously peering at my pots for a few weeks, I finally saw some sprouts! Unfortunately they also looked like weeds. I can't tell the difference.

I am going to go with chives until uncle asks why am I growing weeds in my pot.

1000 steps to fitness

The journey to health begins with 1000 steps and it's starts practically from my backyard. I lived 10 minutes away and this is the first time I've been there.

Parking can be a problem on good weather days. Like ants to sugar, we gravitate towards free activity grounds on a sunny day. It is also a popular picnic place and the smell of grilled sausages along the way to the 1000 steps is a fierce temptation to go home and cook some sausages yourself. That or giving $2.00 to the guy at the grill for a sausage. Unless you parked really close, chances are you get a involuntary warm up hike through the picnic grounds to the starting point. Be strong and resist the sausage.

You are given 2 hiking options, one with step incline and occasional steps (left) or the one with lesser incline but more steps (right). The earlier option apparently is the longer route.

If you took the right path, you will need to hike a fair bit before you encounter the famous stairs.That accounts for approximately 300 steps with the remaining 700 actual steps. That is almost 5 trips up and down Batu Caves.

The steps are muddy and uneven so you are NOT advised to run up and down even if you possess superman stamina. Along the way, you will see people encouraging each other even if they are strangers. Nothing like a common cause to unite people. You can set your own pace and slowly crawl your way up. There is really no reason to give up unless you sustained injury or remembered you didn't turn off the gas at home.

The thick foliage provides much needed shade but also blocks the panoramic view which I am sure can be a great motivator. It is the same at the top unfortunately thus stepping your way up to the peak is reward in itself. If you find that insufficient you can take selfies of yourself doing funny poses there as what I did for Cousin Bro.

I might sound like I don't enjoy myself but the truth can't be further. I immensely enjoyed myself and have made repeated trips back there with Cousin Bro. It is a fun cheap way to keep fit and the fresh mountain air can only do you good. Fun activity with mates and family.

Drop by if you are near.