Hello People

Just to let you all know out there, it's 3am and I'm online chatting to Kt and Mona in their respective time zones. Hehe. Yeah, that's right, I blog nothing.

Ipod Update

For all those who care out there and read my blog, you will know that my Ipod died while I was in the Gold Coast. Well I managed to go to Apple Centre today to query fixing it and I was given some devastating news.

The guy was like "Your ipod has carked it". Alright, well not so much in those words but you get the picture. It's not even worth fixing, my hard drive had died and I am better off buying a new one. Like wtf? Ten gigs of mp3s all gone. I have them all somewhere on various cds around the house but shit man, it takes time to load all of that back on! This sounds like an Apple conspiracy to me. But oh well, I was gonna buy the new Shuffle anyway - it has a clip!

Last Stand at Pancake Parlour

Mona was meant to have left by the time I finished my work in Gold Coast, but as fate would have it, there were delays and we all managed to have one final night at the glorious Pancake Parlour. This is a place where friendships formed, thrived, strained and for some people, terminated. Aaaaah such memories, so asian, such wonderful food, so many a time I had to rush on home to eject a hot chocolate (lactose intolerant I am). Do people detect my sarcasm?

For old time's sake, I brought along my trusty camera and made morons of ourselves asking the keen teenaged waiter to take a photo of us, Dr Wong and Future Dr Moo making a special appearance.

If you see in the foreground, there's a funny shaped object (a toy to be exact), which is otherwise known as a Bop-it. I'm a sucker for silly games and I'm totally addicted to this one. You just pick it up and listen to a voice tell you what you gotta do, and then you do it! Ok, a rather poor explanation, but I am writing this blog at the crack of dawn. Just go to the link and check it out.

Ouchies on the Beach

I've spent three weeks here on the Gold Coast and I thought it was about damn time that I got to the frigging beach. Well I did have a perfectly good excuse for not going in the first two weeks - it had rained nearly every day! I had anticipated humid, wanna-sit-on-the-beach-reading books-sipping-ice-tea kind of weather, but I was cruelly given the cold end of the weather stick.

Anyway happy to embrace my sunny day off, I trotted about 50 metres from the apartment to the coastline. There was another reason to head down to the sand - I wanted to exfoliate my feet!

The gold coast high rise coastline.

My footprint tracks in the sand. Mmmmm good exfoliation.

Is that a condom in the sand? No! It's a jellyfish.


I made sure that my feet rubbed into the sand thoroughly. My duck-like foot prints.

As I was leaving the beach happy with my exfoliation, I stepped onto a small shell. OW! It kinda hurt and the shell snapped but my foot looked okay. It wasn't until I got back that I realised that my foot was bleeding! I was going to photograph my bloodied Havaianas but decided it was a bit gross.

Oh and here's a photo depicting my downward spiral in the Gold Coast. I had to finish this bottle of wine alone, hence my consumption of about 2 glasses of wine every night for about 2 weeks. While I think I slept better, it was a bit depressing to realise that I was drinking alone.

Leesh and Mona's Ducky Dinner

Well, I wasn't back in Melb for this one, but here are photos of Leesh and Mona's going away dinner which was held at Da Hu Peking Duck restaurant. I was kinda looking forward to trying out the place but then I heard some not so rave reviews, courtesy of Kahoons. Not really about the food, but rather how rude the manager was to everyone and whingeing about table numbers.

You can take the boy out of Hong Kong, but you cant take the Honkie out of the boy.

Tina and Leesh

Two Tinas

"Anyone need crack" AH and Leesh.

PT's hubby, PT and co.

Mummy Leesh and her two babies, Mona and Bao.

A nice looking photo of LT and Leesh.

The ANZ crew. Hi Meme!

CC, Leesh and Kahoons finish up the rounds of photos.

Anyhow, Leesh says she'll be blogging her adventures in Europe (I've added a link) and hopefully Mona and Bao will get a move on with their blogs too!

Opera Bar

Yep, here I was again in Sydney for a 3 day weekend from the Gold Coast. There was a little bit of an occasion, Smee was having his going away drinks. We went to Opera Bar, which is not surprisingly, a bar located right at the foot of the steps of the Opera House. The photo is a little bit dark, but that's meant to be the Bridge in the background. Observe the drunk punk's face. Hee hee!

Me and Caz, one of Smee's colleagues.

The rest of the weekend consisted of me helping/watch Smee pack up his apartment with intermissions of eating.

This is my face after the packers told me I wasn't allowed to help.

Meanwhile Smee was more than happy to not help.

RnB

This is a bit of old news for most of us (this blog was meant to go up yesterday) but something super-super-duper-exciting happened on Saturday night : D

MY BAO HAS LEFT ME FOR A MAN CALLED MONA!!

He presented her with a shiny-shiny-bling-bling ring (to match her shiny shiny hair of course) and thus, after looking at the photos of the sparkler, I can understand why. While I am deeply saddened at the loss of casual lesbian kisses, I am very happy that we now have a mutant addition to the Circle - RnB, Bona or whatever else that takes your fancy. Yaaay!

This was probably the worst kept secret EVER!! Ray, we were ALL waiting for you to finally propose! Well maybe not the boys, but definitely all the girls. Hahahaha Judging from what I've been told, it seems as though Mona put in quite a bit of effort too eh? Now, this is blog-worthy news!! Originally, I did have a picture of Bao's ring posted up but I have removed it in fear of her losing her finger to triads.

To Bao and Mona, I am very very happy and excited for you two and if you could have seen me, I was doing little jumps on the spot while clapping my hands. Don't worry Bao, we can't see your hairy fingers - our view is impeded by something else :P

Shooters, Dreamworld and Bowling

I had some friends from Sydney come up and visit me here in the rainy Gold Coast, hoping to catch some UV exposure. Little did they know that the weather has been rather shite.

I took very few pics cos I left my camera at home, hence for all you children's books readers out there (you know who you are), you might as well stop reading now, as there will be few photographic moments (but then again, you probably don't read my blog anyway).

After a late Saturday night arrival, we headed into Surfer's Paradise in search of a bar. We found "Shooters" which was recommended by a friend of a friend of a friend as a 'fob' bar, full of those of Japanese ancestry. There was no queue, which was semi-promising. However once we reached inside, we realised we must've been there on R'nB Surfer night. Not my usual bar crowd but a Long Island ice tea fixed that right up.

Anyhow, we didn't stay long and the highlight of the night (all 2 hours of it) was sitting in a massage chair. I will SOOO buy an OSIM chair when I can afford it. I kept complaining that the music was so loud, which just reiterated that I'm getting too old for this.

On Sunday, we stuck to our original plan of going to Dreamworld, despite all weather reports pointing to thunderstorms. My last trip to the Gold Coast was about 10 years ago (my god, a whole decade) and while I don't remember much of my last trip, I don't think much has changed apart from the inclusion of the Big Brother house and Wiggles world. That didn't tickle my interest at all.

We rode most of the thrill seeker rides, which I thorougly enjoyed despite ageing about 10 years after my first 360 degree flip on the The Claw. The best (but shortest) ride of the day was the Giant Drop, which involve being leisurely taken up a 39 storey-tall tower, then waiting, waiting.... more waiting and then suddenly dropping 120 metres. I guess this is as close as I will get to the feeling of committing suicide from a very tall building. Except that I was smiling on the way down.

The rain kicked in at about 2pm and since we were already wet, there was nothing holding us back from all the water rides. We also watched a Tiger Island show and while it is a little cruel to watch wild animals do jumping tricks, tigers are just very cute, giant puddy tats. Hehehe

The night was capped off with a trip to the bowling alley. I'm not sure what's wrong with my bowling arm as I only managed to score 80 on my first game and 74 on my second. Tsk tsk, disappointing.

Bowling scoreboard.

Me, AW and JT.

Far out - more food

Alright, so I actually started this blog on the date above, but I decided to include Friday night's dinner as well. Seems a waste to write another blog on food - just thought I'd combine the two. I really should find something else to blog about as I'm sure that people are tired of my pathetic attempts at cookery.

Yes, I eat on a coffee table in front of the TV on the same plastic blue table mat every night. The only thing that stops me from eatng at my laptop is the fear of dirtying/damaging it.

Thursday's dinner was fried hor fun with chicken, seafood marinara mix and vegies. Smee showed me how to make this. Again, I cooked too much for one person. Fresh chili and soy sauce on the side is essential!

Friday night was pasta spirals with chorizo and basil pesto. That yellowy gunk on the side is sweet chicken and corn soup. I ate some kiwifruit and yoghurt to aid digestive passage. Again too much food.

Moshi Moshi!

Well, it was a little overdue but I finally encountered my first Gold Coast 'let's-mistake-the-asian-girl-as-Japanese' incident today. Nothing too exciting really. But I'll paint a picture anyway. And try to make it as exciting as possible. Just for all the readers out there. Which total to a number less than the fingers on my left hand........excluding my thumb.

I was enjoying my chicken schnitzel and coleslaw sandwich in the food court after seeing a record number of 80+ year olds. It's days like that which make me wish I had a different job. Whilst staring into the mid-distance, halfway through a chew, I notice a 20-something caucasian male kneel down beside me. Just as I give him a 'wtf-are-you-doing-oh-shit-you're-going-to-steal-my-handbag' sideglance, he blurts out "Moshi moshi!" and some other japanese phrase.

While still holding my sandwich to my face, I say (with a surprisingly deep voice) "I'm not Japanese". I think he nearly fell over when he heard my accent. He says "You're not?". I shake my head from side to side. Cabbage falls out of my mouth. Then he says "Oh, you look like someone I know." HOLD ON. How well do you know this person if you managed to mistake her for me? Maybe he met her in the dark? "Sorry about that" he says and left me to finish my meal.

I don't look remotely Japanese.

Yabbies and Pippies

I escaped the rain of the Gold Coast and joined Smee in Sydney for the weekend. It was a 28 degree day, thus a trip to the fish market was deemed compulsory. We indulged in sashimi, prawns and Moreton Bay bugs for lunch by which I, who has been accused of blogging EVERYTHING, surprisingly did not photograph. :P

Then for dinner it was yabbies and pippies! Yum yum! Here are some photos of our dinner preparation.

Smee holding two of his beloved yabbies, Y1 and Y2.


Yabby posing nicely for the camera. Isn't he pretty?


The yabbies and pippies taking a bath together.


Smee proudly holding onto a yabby.


Me proudly holding onto a yabby.

Now, some before and after shots:

Pippies happily soaking in the tub.


Pippies happily soaking up XO sauce.


Team Yabby on the stove. Team Smee photographing.


Team Smee made Team Yabby sleepy by putting them in the freezer for about 10 minutes.

Yabbies in garlic butter. Team Smee 1, Team Yabby 0.