Goodbye 2010.

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy new year.

Just came back from the airport- we picked up a very agitated & talkative M from Gate B. Apparently a guy from customs was picking on her and her jars of XO sauce. Haha. We tell her to stop buying that stuff- but to no avail.

So yeah. Finally reunited- for less than 24 hours though, for D is leaving for Shanghai tomorrow morning.

Quick reflection: 2010 was a good year for me. I had more ups than downs, made more friends than I had lost, lost contact with quite a few people but hopefully I'll get a chance to redeem myself before my holidays are over.  I've passed my first year of uni (dumped all my notes in the recycling bin) and have learned an incredible amount of USEFUL stuff at work.  I have gone through almost all the TVB dramas played this year (hawhaw) and my chinese has improved dramatically. Actually- this year's been pretty good.  Don't know why I complain so much.

Hope you guys had a great 2010. I wish for 2011 to be even more spectacular.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Sweeties Paradise (Chinatown) or just food in gen

HEY THERE!

Currently waiting for my new quilt cover/pillow cases to do their time in spin cycle, so I have a bit of time to bitch talk about the time I went to Sweeties Paradise.

Don't think I mentioned this in my last post- but what motivated us to walk into this new dessert store was some WOM advice we got from a random walking out of the store.  The old lady said to us "The black sesame dessert is REALLY REALLY GOOD".  I don't know about you, but when old asian people (who look like they make nice traditional desserts) tell me something is good, I usually tend to believe them.

I have learned from my mistake and will never do so again- because the black sesame dessert was absolutely awful.

 Takeaway menu

 Don't think you can actually read what they have on their menu.  Basically just an array of sweet "soup"ish desserts incl sago, red bean, grass jelly, green bean (mung bean?), fruit salads, puddings and iced drinks.

K ordered a Taro & Coconut Milk sago "soup".  A pretty safe option I think- you can't really screw up making sago. It's just coconut + sago + taro.  Price I think was just under $5.

D and I ordered different sesame desserts (sweet potato balls, black glutinous rice), but it looked the same, and we couldn't figure out which was what.

The consistency of the black stuff was just so gross and light and not what it should be.  You could easily tell that they mixed a packet of those black sesame powder with lots of corn starch. Gross. Didn't taste like it at all.

Really disappointed.  But regardless, I will go back and try something different. The red bean pudding looked interesting- and the prices are okay-ish. Sometimes when the queue for Meet Fresh is too long, it's nice to have another dessert place to fall back on.

***

I finally tried the Green Tea Latte at Ichiban Boshi.  Since I had that Macha Green Milk Tea at chatime, I have not had the courage to try any green tea + milk combination.  But this latte was SO nice.  The waitress told me the secret was the brown sugar! Strange, eh? I never use brown sugar in my coffee! But I will now :)

My holidays are half over. :(  I'm a bit scared of going back to work because I know there is so much I need to do.  But I'll worry about that later.  Will embrace what I have now.

Spending lots of time with K- rare, I've barely seen her since I started work and I don't eat with her that often. These hols, I've been having breakfast, lunch and dinner with her and I realised her taste/preference in food has changed so much!  Kinda sad because we still live in the same house. Haha..

But I guess some things never change...

Black nails are here to stay.

Have a lovely new year guys!

HELLO SHINEE!!!

Originally I was gonna blog about a new dessert place called "Sweeties Paradise".  But I have something else to do- very urgently so I'll just talk about it briefly and upload photos later. It's located in Chinatown next to Y2K (where Helen's bakery used to be- I'm so devo, I luffed Helen's Bakery..).  Don't order anything there. Esp their sesame "soup". It's so chat. So nasty.  Just a word of warning. But more details + photos in a later post.

Anyway, guess who's coming to Sydney on Jan 12 2011?

SHINEE ARE!

They're gonna be at Town Hall and I'm gonna see if I can snatch up a few tickets.

WHO WANTS TO COME WITH?! (actually, my attendance depends on the cost of the tickets... BUT I REALLY WANT TO GO).

YAY YAY SO EXCITED!

Xmas noms & so on

T'was super hot today as D, K and I made our way through the masses in the sweltering heat.  George St was freaking crowded with SLOW ASIAN COUPLES. OMG.

It's boxing day. BE PRACTICAL. Don't hold hands and walk with an arms-length gap between you. Other people need to get through.  Important people. Tired people. People desperate to get out of the sun. People who are lugging 4 quilts they got on sale at Myer. People who parked their cars in Ultimo/Glebe.

I have never felt such an urge to karate kick their butts off the sidewalk but they just walk SO DAMN SLOW. Shorter legs = Slower pace. Argh. Walk faster!

Yep. So actually what happened this morning. I got up late (around 11 I think..) and dressed quickly to get some good bargains in the city. D made us vacuum the house .. TWICE (the second time this week) before letting us out of the house.  We parked in Ultimo and made the trek to Market city where I bumped into Sharon, Milo and Rohan (and Doug in Giordano). All showed signs of being the early shoppers. Rohan looked like he passed out on the GJ table. Ha.

D later asked me if he had passed out (lol). Very funny.

Bought a pair of flipflops because I was stupid in the morning and wore flats. By the time I got to MC, my feet hurt like crazeee.

SO. At Myer, D says "Lets hit the quilt section first". Omg. So packed.

SO
FRICKIN
PACKED.

The line for the bloody escalators was just enormous. Ridiculous.

The line for the "PAY HERE" counters were even longer.

Bought 4 quilts and decided to get them back to the car before shopping for clothes. But by the time we got to the car, I didn't really feel like walking back to Myer.... but we did anyway. Hmm. That sentence was so pointless.  Stayed in Myer FOREVER. Bought something from every floor except the old lady clothes floor.  I THOUGHT THE SALES WERE GOOD! So happy :D

Trivia: Myer don't have Polo Ralph Ladies, but they have a nice boutique stand on the mens floor. So weird. But yeah, stayed long enough to realise D:

So long that when we came out, it was time for dinner.  We went to Ton Ton! Only because it was pouring rain, and no one brought an umbrella.  But it was good. Sukiyaki don + ton ton ramen + miso ramen = $32.

When we were walking there throught Town Hall station to avoid the rain, there was a couple walking infront of us with nice shopping bags (lots and lots of $$ spent on good clothes).  I was asking my sister in canto (cos i thought the couple were non-asians)

B:  Wow. That looks like a lot of money spent. Do you think the guy bought everything? D:
K: Err. I don't think thats a guy.

THEN, the "guy" turns around, and my sister is right, it's a girl.  And she understood what we were saying because SHE WAS ASIAN. Freaking hell. Dyed hair is so misleading.

Embarrassing. So we sped walked to Ton Ton. Minutes after the waiter takes our orders, THEY SIT DOWN ON THE TABLE NEXT TO US. And we saw them play under-the-table-footsies.

Gah.

But yes, digressing, It was a good day today. Lots of fun with D & K :)

Just uploaded a few photos for your viewing pleasure- (not really. just for my memory- I know one day out of carelessness or computer failure, I will lose these photos if I don't post them up somewhere..)

I made a giant pot of this soup. I MEAN GIANT. So we've been living off this for the third day (well not really- just having this for breakfast everyday). So healthy.

Got this because the glasses are so nice :)  But yeah, not so healthy. Baileys is kinda yuck. But the cups are nice.

Brownies. All gone now. :( But so good. Unhealthy.

Ok. We finished this cake in MINIMAL time. Man, so unhealthy. I'm gonna get diabetes these hols.  Eaten crazy amounts of sugar.  By crazy, I mean CRAZEEE. Yes, like the photo below...

Shopping. For my viewing pleasure.. haha

Most productive day

Merry Christmas to you all!

It doesn't feel like Christmas Day at all- but I guess it's never really been a big day for our family; we don't do much during any of the festive holidays.  The one we care about the most would be New Years and for that, we'd just pop open a bottle of champagne and have a glass or two.

At midnight, D and I opened a bottle of Baileys which we've both been eyeing the whole week. The Baileys icecream they have at Cold Rock Cafe tastes EXACTLY the same as this. So eugh sweet and alcoholic. Nope. Eugh.

I wish I liked drinking coffee.  They come in a wide variety of cups, colours and funky patterns on the froth.  There isn't much you can do with green tea (close to finishing my stash again D:  perhaps I should consider switching to the leafy teas?).

ANYWAY, today (Christmas eve) I had a mildly productive day.  After doing some pre-christmas grocery shopping, I managed to clean my room.  I can now see my floor. And my desk. All I did was throw out all my HSC stuff (recycling bin is now so damn heavy).  I still have  a lot of paperwork from work- but I need to take those back to work to dump in the special locked bins.

Dumdidum. After that I fb-ed a little bit (there isn't much to do on Christmas eve really).  I don't go to church, M isn't here to go Christmas lights touring with me around the 'burbs. D was too busy getting sucked into his Jap/Communist spy drama and K was... I have no idea what she does- but she sure spends a lot of her time on the computer.

As a result of my boredom, I made SOUP.  Yes. Asian clear broth vegetable soup. Having steak every night (plus lots of BBQs), is making me feel a bit sick of red meat. This soup is EXACTLY what I needed. So simple too!  A few carrots, stalks of celery, potatoes, tomatoes salt and a bit of sugar. DONE. I went a bit crazy when I was peeling the vegetables and peeled an entire bag of carrots, so I ended up with a giant pot of soup. Yommmm.

For dindins D, K and I made wontons!

SO HEALTHY RIGHT?

So I had to balance that out with browniessss.  Doubled all the quantities to make a giant tray.

Tomorrow's brunch is all sorted.

Just kidding. I am kinda freaking out right now because we're running low on food already.  Can't believe we eat so much when we have nothing to do :(

[[GUESS WHO IS A BRIDESMAID AT HER COUSIN'S WEDDING!!!]]

Probably time to sleep now. Holidays have once again screwed up my sleeping habits.

Google looks cool today

They're holiday pictures.  I went through each one. Apparently together they mean peace, joy and beauty around the world.
I love Christmas time :)  Gonna go out and see some lights tonight.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVE!

small world- made smaller by facebook

SO, I have this long lost cousin..

Not so lost anymore, thanks to facebook.

Yep.

And I found out she's going out with some guy from our school.

:O :O :O

And her bro, well- I found him first when I was stalking my work friend's fb. They're good friends too!

♥ FB!

getting back on track :)

So yesterday, I was supposed to talk about yumcha and failjumps attempted at Lis' place- but before I even got up to that, I was tempted by Wii, and left my blog to fend for itself.

I have come back today to continue my unfinished business.

So Tuesday morning, I got up nice and early (not really) to do some washing (running out of clothes haha already!) and cleaning up of my room.  Halfway through that, I see Borbs pulling up infront of my house :O  Picks up Mawson and leaves.  30ish minutes later, I am reunited with these guys + Duncan, Sy and later on Will @ King's Seafood Restaurant for Yumcha.

Honestly- I have no idea this place is called King's Seafood. D:  I go there at least twice or three times a month and I was just oblivious to the fact they changed their name!

Total bill = $111.50

Yumcha with non-chinese people is always really amusing.  Just watching Sy & Will's face when the yumcha ladies push their trolleys past shrieking out various dimsum names is extremely entertaining.  A mix of confusion, anticipation, and of course an element of surprise- those small ladies have really loud voices.

Anyway, after yumcha I left to go to Lis' and the other headed to Meadowbank Wharf to do who knows what.

The last sleepover I went to was in.. year 11 I think, or 12 (also was my first!!) when we went to sim's place and stayed up playing guitar hero.  This time, it was supposed to be a Twilight marathon, but due to technical difficulties, we were only able to watch (more like criticize every scene/ dialogue/character) the first movie before we moved onto Monster in law.  I'm sure I fell asleep during Monster in law- but by then, it was already 5ish.  At 7, I woke up briefly, took some photos and fell back into my slumber.  I don't think I can sleep on the floor very well. My arms and legs/hips have bruises on the side. ARGH!

There was supposed to be a lunar eclipse yesterday. So we went out in search of some sort of lunar shadow or something in the sky.  All we saw were trees (lol Baulko) and clouds and a really nice blue sky. So we took jumpshots.

So incredibly hard with 7 people ;D

Anyway, my arms hurt from playing Wii last night...

Dumdidum.

This morning, Lis treated us to Choc Chip waffles (she's gonna kill me for this, but seriously, Cassian has to marry her for her waffles. HAHA they're so yum!) and then I headed to Homebush for some BBQ fun with work folk.

We had fun- as in TANDEM BIKE FUN- but please tune in another day to read about that. I need to socialise on MSN (yes, I'm back on MSN with a NEW moving dp every week. Please chat to me :).

Hope you all have a super lovely week! The weather is fantastic!

yumcha & failjumps

Hi all,


Hope you've been having a good holiday so far.  My annual leave officially began yesterday and I feel like I've done so much!

But I guess I started celebrating really early :)  Friday night to be precise.  My Friday began with a tsunami of work crashing down on me from early in the morning.  I had planned to finish before 5, but ended up finishing around 6. Not too bad, but I guess that's the way the cookie crumbles.

So before I start blabbering on about Friday- here's what happened the Saturday night during the week before. It was M's birthday, so we went out for dinner. Guess what we had...

Lobster sashimi- YOMYOMYOM

Friday evening began with the trek to Saap Thai- on Pitt Street.  It was a nice celebration for the end of work for the year (and for the BAccs, the end of their first internships!). Congratulations on finishing up work :)  I'm really pumped for the holidays.

Now, about the food- I read a few good and bad reviews about this place.  In hindsight, I wish I had paid more attention to the bad reviews- didn't really like the food they had there. Bosco ordered this real nasty plate of raw soft shelled crab salad.

Freaking hell. Haven't tasted anything so bad in such a long time.  After our end of the table got a taste of that crab, we passed it down the table and told everyone to "try it because it tastes so good!"

Result- everyone screwed up their faces and reached for water!

Dessert =  what else but a Maccas soft serve run!

Then karaoke- to make it the perfect end to the night. We went to Sydney Karaoke (on George street next to that korean convenience store) and when we got out of the lifts on level 2, we were met by two curry security dudes holding metal detecting wands. D:  When our hour was up, he actually came into our room to usher us out :(  Can say I am not going back again. Someone take me to Echobox. I heard their karaoke is good!


Saturday morning I was up bright and early to meet Chezza, Annie and Yun at Bondi Junction.  We were planning on spending a few hours at the beach, but that didn't happen due to unforeseen circumstances.  The weather.  No one actually checked the weather forecast. Bad idea.  It actually wasn't so bad.  We just spent mos of our time eating- or chatting indoors.  Bondi Westfield is so posh :)

Headed to starbucks in Circular Quay afterwards to enjoy a good drink.  Rumour has it that no one keeps in touch with their mentorees anymore.  But I really miss mine :)  Super glad I got the chance to catch up with them again. They're growing up :''') :''''')

Afterwards, we split and I met up with Borbs, Edsped, Joseph, Simon, and Awong to watch Carols in the Domain.

Drinking from that ferral  tap by the fountain...

Alice made fried rice, and someone brought plastic cups and forks so we ate from them :)

Cheers!

TO BE CONTINUED- (at Lis' place right now for a sleepover, and we're playing Wii. it's my turn)

taking photos of food is weird...

Well it isn't.  Everyone does it.

yo what's the haps, homie g

Hi Everyone.

It feels like ages since I've last been here. WHY? Cos I've been so darn busy.

I was here about 1.5 weeks ago. I had come back from retreat and sunburnt like crazy. Now I am tanned like crazy in all the wrong places. I have HORRID and distinct tan lines, but you probably all know about that now. There are photos on fb. I am not kidding. It is that bad.

Timeline after that:

Monday: work flat out. Get home late.

Tuesday: work flat out. Leave early to go to office. Leave. Get home late

Wednesday: work flat out. Leave early (which is 6 = not early tbh). Bosco's birthday bash at essen :D

Note: it's hard to see, but I just wanted to point out he's wearing his old lady korean hat.

Thursday: Same as Monday
Shopped for a dress also after work. Less than 15 mins. DONE. haha. I went to the right place.

Friday: My senior lied the day before. He said I could leave at 2.30 to make up for working over time the days before, but I ended up leaving at 5 anyway.  Hurried back to the office to get changed. Found out one of my friends had booked a night at the Rydges so we took advantage of her big mirror and bright lights to get changed and ready for our black tie christmas party. Following photo was captured by a photobooth machine.  Basically, this event is held for the staff every year for us to take advantage of canapes, free alcohol to get drunk and floozy and for creepy managers to hit on us.  True story.

Saturday: Thanks to sim :) We were able to go to LUNA PARK. Whole bucket load of fun. From the top of my head we went on the following: dogem cars, Wild Mouse, Pirate ship, rotor and ive forgotten the name of the other one.  SO MUCH FUN! Miss you girls :) We should do this again. v soon.

Sunday: Thanks to Bosco, I had another day of free fun at Taronga Zoo.

Thanks Coke! (And thanks SY I stole your photos)

OKAY IM FALLING ASLEEP.

Hectic day.

Will continueeee laterrr

i be back

yo homeeezz

I am back. I am suburnt. And I am damn tired. (but I had so much fun!)

My face is so badly burnt that a couple of random people asked me what happened to my face.

But more about that later.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend!