Tag: Singapore

Australia Day


Australia Day yesterday brought perfect weather to Melbourne. A top of 24 deg with a slight cool breeze and picture perfect sunny conditions saw a few of us sitting by the poolside of Gerry and Jesslyn’s new home, sipping a crisp white and nibbling at fruits and Chinese New Year biscuits. It was a little farewell party for Jesslyn’s mum, who was returning to Singapore after spending close to a year helping them with their beautiful 2 year old. The mum is affectionately known to all of us as Poh Ma Ma and we’re all better for having known her this past year.

We were there from noon, after Tress and I spent the morning grocery shopping and preparing a salad – with yummy barbequed chicken breast marinated in lemon pepper, paprika and tumeric. We only left after 7.30pm, got home and took Scruff to the park for a little bit, before settling down to watch the Federer v Nadal semi-final of the Aussie Open.

It was a perfect day in so many ways.

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Weekends, soon to be different


English: Category:Images of Canberra Burton an...
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The VTAC offers are scheduled to be released today. Any hopes of Kiddo opting for a BA/LLB course in Monash have been reduced to a mere theoretical possibility, as she has been really excited about doing the PhB course in ANU in Canberra instead. I have in fact, paid a deposit for her residential college in the Burton and Garran Hall (“B&G”). Tress had also set Kiddo up with a supplementary credit card and got it activated and ready to go. We’re likely to be taking that long hike to Canberra again, around the second week of Feb.

On Saturday, we made a vegetable soup together. It’s a continuation of Kiddo’s cooking lessons. The class took place in between two hefty sessions of cleaning. After the usual vacuuming, Tress, Kiddo and I settled down for some soup, after which I went out and continued hacking down our overgrown Silver Stirling hedges. Well not exactly hacking down but bringing them down from a monstrous 3+ meters to a more manageable 2 meters or so. Earlier that morning Tress and I had gotten up early to get to Tullamarine again – this time taking a young lady doctor from Mulgrave who was going back to Malaysia for a short holiday. We got to her home just before 7, dropped her off at Tulla just before 8am and got to the Vic Market to get stuff for a barbeque we did last night. So all in it was a long and busy day and after prepping the communion spiel and other bits I had to do in church the next day, the 3 of us settled down to a game of cards for a bit.

On Friday we had gone to the Knox for a movie – a very ordinary Sherlock Homes sequel (“Game of Shadows“). It was a disjointed and messy fare and loads of bomb blasts and slow-mo running, jumping and fist fights… sigh.

Last night we had 3 families over for a barbeque dinner. Sort of 3 families – one still has her hubby and kids in Singapore for their holidays, and she had returned to Melbourne early to go back to work. We again finished up late – it was about 12am when we got to bed, and gym this morning was sort of tough.

If it sounds like we’re trying to cramp our weekend, I guess I am. 3 weekends from now, our weekends will be very different. I just want to keep the good thing firing on all cylinders while we can.

A Niggly Weekend


After submitting an essay on Thursday night, I felt like a sudden depletion of energy ebbing away inside me. The next day I worked on a couple of relatively light files, then went home looking forward to a night with Tress, Kiddo and some friends in a little Singapore café in Boronia. Bert’s café on 146A Boronia Road serves Singaporean street food and the owner chef used to work at the Meridien in Singapore. About half a dozen families were there and we took up the entire café. The food was very good and the service was very friendly and quick, with normal reasonably low prices ranging from $5 appetizers to $9 main noodle dishes. I’d go back in a hurry if it wasn’t so far away from our home.

Sat after our usual coffee and brekky at our local (The Coffee Club at the Forest Hill Chase) we did some  quick grocery shopping before returning to do some overdue house cleaning. Tress cleaned up the garden and front yard, I vacuumed the house and cleared parts of the gutter as well as bit and pieces of other chores. Kiddo had a bit of a mishap on Mahoney Street… kua kua kua…

We decided to stay home that night and I cooked – we haven’t stayed in for home cooked food on a Sat night for a while now. The wonbuk tofu soup was very good for a cool night.

After the disastrous semi final game, I slept in and missed the fun in church early that morning when a team was putting the furniture back in after a carpet steam clean. A few of us – pastor and family, Jason and family – had lunch in Shangri La after church and we had a good time just catching up on a number of things. That afternoon was a bit lazy for me and I basically just vegged out doing next to nothing other than take the little Black Jedi out to the park for a walk – it was a gorgeous sunny afternoon so it felt perfect, except not the pressure builds up again for my next piece of work. Something on sola scriptura and prophesy… help me Lord.

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