Feliz Navidad!

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you all had a fantabulous day!

My festive celebrations began last week; the non-stop eating began Thursday night with my work Christmas party at Cookie on Swanston St. A whole bunch of food, drink and chats, which followed on with a boogie at good ol' Cherry Bar...the last time we'd dance to "Sex Machine" before the godfather of soul finally packed it in. We also managed to fit in a few egg custard buns at 1:30am.
The next day, a cuppa with Rach and then a 'raw stuff' overload at Shoya in the city with Janice and her visiting parents. It was incredible...two words: LOBSTER SASHIMI.

Only a couple of days before Christmas, and Andrew and I were out in the city looking for all those last minute Chrissy pressies, along with a million other Melbournians. We had a massive lunch at the Pancake Parlour before helping Janice take her parents and their 12 pieces of luggage to the airport...which was followed by a $10.80 e-Tag bill to get to Chadstone (it only took half an hour to get all the way there!). We destroyed any chance we had of keeping the waistline in check over the holiday period by visiting Koko Black...chocolate mousse martini..mmmm. As if we hadn't eaten enough, we then went to Sonja's place where she had provided about 11 food dishes for 9 people. Safe to say we only got through one of the four sticks of garlic bread, and she's probably still eating leftovers!

I worked on Xmas eve, so I managed to put the brakes on the eating ever so slightly, but Christmas Day was riddick. It started off with a day at Chris and May Yen's place, where the boys played Dota (of course) and the girls chatted and played Scattergories. We came up with some great stuff. For example (the letter was E);
Q: Things you find in the ocean
A: Eggs...of fish.

Those that hung around also engaged in a stressful 9-hole game of golf, via Nintendo Wii...Andrew and I lost by one stroke...damn the water hazards! After the narrow defeat, we comforted ourselves by going home and eating the most non-Christmas dinner ever; steamboat. I rounded out the night by falling asleep on the couch. Class.

Boxing Day, like Christmas Day was cold and wet, but finished up with a great celebration of my dad's 60th birthday...and again, WAY too much food.
From a very Chinese 60th to a 21st where I was the token Asian, it's been an interesting last few days! I made the mammoth drive to Flinders yesterday for Chelsea's 21st...getting lost and running into terrible traffic along the way. Somehow the sun came out for the garden party, and I couldn't have been dressed more inappropriately, or looked more out of place, but it was still a great day. A selection of my photos from both these events can be found after the jump.
I returned to civilisation and clear road signs in the night and ended up at Soph's aunty's mansion in Balwyn (which she's currently housesitting) for a hilarious trip down MLC memory lane, brought on by the realisation that we have our 5 year reunion in a matter of months! Does this mean I'm getting old? whyyyyyyyyyyyy......?!?!?!

Dad's 60th

The boys of the "kids' table"

The girls of the "kid's table"

Family and the cake

Chelsea's 21st

Cait, Chelsea, Manda, Jess = retards

Silliness and good times

The birthday girl and I, and Cait being...special.

Kenwood girls.

Hot Hot Heat

I can't believe how quickly this year has flown by; it's been memorable, to say the least.
Recently I've been pretty busy. I've been working a reasonable amount, but quite not as much as I'd like, so the job hunt continues.
Two Thursdays ago I attended the premiere of a short film/advertisement my friend Luci made. Hers was one of two films that won the TAC "Make a Film, Make a Difference" competition. It's pretty incredible to see peers succeeding on such a high level. After the screening, Steph, Haley and I made the mistake of hanging back (but we made it up to ourselves with glorious bread, dips and lattes afterwards) to watch "The Guardian". Granted, we didn't have to pay, but...well, the film should have ended 7 times before it actually did. And yes, we counted...
Friday night was dinner on Victoria St. (don't ever go to Van Van, it sucks), followed by gelato and Taboo at May Yen's house and me arguing that durian really does smell like rotting poo.

The state's bushfires continued to intensify, and I...went to the beach. It was the much planned Christmas weekend getaway with my MLCers; good times all round. We headed up to Anglesea after lunch (the car trip involved a very loud Rage Against the Machine singalong) and went straight to the beach to catch some rays before dinner and a crazy night of exploding fondue kits (we ended up eating the chocolate off the table!), singing and dancing (nothing like a bit of James Brown to get the blood pumping), great chats (love you girls) and me sleeping in a crack (aka three people on two single beds pushed together). I also ate some of the greatest chips of my life the next day. You can check out my photos after the jump.

The next few days involved work and several dinners, with Nandos Nicole (can you please quit already?!), then May Yen, almost-exploded Emma, Janice, Sonja & Seki-Selina, followed by an extremely long and dissappointing meal with my parents and brother (word to the wise: never randomly pick a restaurant out of the entertainment book...it will end in you waiting over an hour in Wantirna for crappy food), curry with Rach & Pegs, with the weekend being rounded out by Wendy & Lyndon's housewarming and eventually an evening of talking about boobs, apricots and camp memories with Cait & Chelsea, who came up to visit me in 'the big smoke'.
I'm sad to report that Jeremy's finally left Melbourne for good, and I went to say farewell last night...good luck in Singapore mate, I'm sure I'll see you soon.

Oh yeah, can you guys leave some comments via the chatbox...say hello or something funny, I love a bit of interaction! Ok, that's all I have for the moment. I am aware that I've used entirely too many brackets in this entry, apologies, but I can't be bothered editing so just...deal. :P



"long live the weekend!"

Chickies at the Anglesea beach

Pegs and I. Quite possibly the worst (yet equally entertaining) photo EVER.

Eating chocolate fondue off the table

Drinking Baileys from ridiculous glasses.
"who knew milk could be this exciting on a Saturday night?"

Girlies after the beach

Fush n Chups

Team shot!

Shakira Shakira

It's cool having stuff to blog about that doesn't involve a foreign country.
I've so far done 3 shifts selling ties and cufflinks, which occasionally gets boring (because I mostly work alone) but the concept of working and actually earning money is a good one, indeed. Last Friday and Saturday night was the "Fungus Fairy Tale Ball"; the place looked incredible, the program went off with reletively few hitches and the kids really seemed to enjoy themselves so it's been declared a success. The amount of food we had leftover at the end of each night, however, was what I would describe as riddick. And enough to feed a small nation.

Sunday was spent watching "Ella Enchanted" and gossiping at Sonja's place with her and Janice, in the night, dinner in Camberwell (I had the greatest green tea ice cream of my life) followed by board games - like back in the old days - at Emma & Wudok's new house. Well, it's new for me anyway. If you've never played the game Articulate, I highly recommend it...in fact, I IMPLORE you. (if you were there on the night, you'd get it.)

Monday was lunch at a Thai restaurant on Lygon, served by a potential 'lady man' and some seriously good chicken Pad Thai. It was then off to the airport to say goodbye to Yvette for 3 months for another year...hope you're having fun and eating lots!
By chance I actually managed to get hold of Kate (you are in the top 5, i swear!) and spontaneously have coffee with her on Chapel Street before fighting the traffic back into the city to see the PS school of music World Vision concert at the Athenaeum Theatre. The guy that completely trashed all those good songs with his complete lack of singing ability is a disgrace to beetroots everywhere!
I calmed myself down with gelati from the original place on Lygon, before having a slumber party with Jan and Jen (we like, totally had pillowfights in our underwear!) and heading off to work the next morning before meeting up with the aforementioned gals for shopping around the city in a heat so dry you could launder your entire wardrobe in a heartbeat. All that and I still managed to get home in time to watch The OC. phew!

Ok, more photos...firstly a shot of the wedding I attended last week and the final leg of my crazy holiday; San Fransisco and Los Angeles...westside, y'all!

My family and the bride's (my cousin) family...minus, um...the groom.

The view of Alcatraz from Pier 39

Pegs & Lacey

A tower thingy

Bringing the banana to San Francisco!

Seals lazing around

The fog of San Fran

Waaaaaallmac....

"Welcome to The Rockkkk"

Hanging out with Lian and Barnaby

Raul roughs it on the M Tram

I left my heart in San Francisco...

Happy Halloween!

Raggety Ann and Super Mario peruse the juice selection

The water comes out of the ceiling into the bath tub!

Urban Outfitters...where all your dreams come true :P

Johnny Rockets on Melrose Ave...the last day of my trip :(



Oh, one more thing. I feel compelled to share something hilarious my aunty wrote in an email recently. She's just gotten to Singapore after spending some time in Italy and she went to visit a famous volcano.

We then walked to a distance and from there we could see the flow of the lava from Mt Etna. It was really spectacular.
I asked why we could not get closer and was told
if you get any closer we will melt.