Old times

I took a trip down memory lane this afternoon while going through Ally’s Flickr photos. How I miss the girls back home and the laughter we used to share every time we got together. I don’t think there ever was a dull moment with them. Sometimes I wished I were still living in Singapore…

Me & Dia at my hen's party at Ritz

Hui, Ally & me at Shirhaini's wedding

The 'yearly' transfer of our infamous Makan Parade cup. Who has it now? Is it you Dia?

The girls at one of our board game nights

Strolling along the bridge after one of our annual Christmas dinners

Over the years, we've become so accustomed to sleeping together

Looking forward to catching up with the girls this December!

A hiking we will go...

Work has been a madhouse lately and the weeks seemed to have flashed past so quickly. I had lots to blog about but just couldn’t find the time to and it’s probably old news by now.

But, busy as we may be, Pen and I still managed to steal time away for our sixth year anniversary! Has it only been six years? Seems way longer to me…

We (or me rather, seeing I was the one who organised the trip) decided to do something a little different this year. Instead of our usual nice dinners, we chose to ‘rough’ it out with nature, hike one and a half hours, risk being attacked by wild animals (I was, in fact, attacked by a bird who wanted a piece of my egg and lettuce sandwich) and have picnic on the rocks.

We set out at 9am on a Saturday morning for our two-hour drive to Lamington National Park. I must say though, we were delayed for about 45 mins because half an hour into our trip, we realised somebody forgot to put the backpack with our food, water, insect repellent, sun screen and first aid kit in the car! Hehe.

Didn’t let that dampen our spirits though! After driving up the mountain’s long and winding road for 50 mins, we finally arrived at the park. I’d already planned beforehand to go on the Picnic Rock and Elabana Falls trail (a three-hour return hike), hence the picnic. We wasted no time – after arming ourselves with a map, spraying ourselves with insect repellent and a final check that we’ve got all our food supplies, we were off!

The man with all our supplies - at the entrance of our trail

Venturing deeper into the jungle, i mean, forest

Finally made it to Picnic Rock after a 1.5-hour hike

After stuffing ourselves with sandwiches, we continued our hike to the waterfalls

Our final destination - the gorgeous natural Elabana Falls

Picturesque beauty

Here's a slide-show with more pictures!

Have you seen my shadow?

I’m officially the proud owner of a cute little Toyota Yaris! Meet Shadow, my one-year-old greyish blue, 5 door YRS hatchback. I bought her two weeks ago – wasted no time after getting my licence.

She’s such a joy to drive and I love how easily she zips everywhere. I love my car!

Here's Shadow, sharing her new home with Pen's Corolla!

Show Me What's Your Flickr

Spotted this on Ally’s blog this morning and thought it’d be fun to do.

All you have to do is type your answer to the following questions into flickr search:

What is your first name?
What is your favorite food?
What high school did you go to?
What is your favorite color?
Who is your celebrity crush?
What is your favorite drink?
What is your dream vacation?
What is your favorite dessert?
What do you want to do when you grow up?
Who/what do you love most in life?
Choose one word that describes you?
What is your Flickr name?

- Using only the first page, pick an image
- Copy and paste each of the URLs into the Mosaic Maker
- Post your mosaic!

Here’s my mosaic.

Updated - Meeting Mr A-Z

I've finally managed to upload all 5mins of Life is Wonderful. Here you go...

Meeting Mr A-Z

I kicked up quite a fuss when I missed his gig earlier this year in March coz’ of my trip back to Singapore. Ever since, I had been crossing my fingers (and toes) and hoping Jason Mraz would return to Brisbane for another concert. And come back he did, and so soon too!

Izaeel and I eagerly made our way to the Tivoli last night to see the wordsmith play. It was my second time seeing him “live” and I was soooo excited. He was absolutely fabulous at the 2006 Mosaic Music Festival. I was quite certain he would work up another mind blowing performance so we bought tickets regardless of the fact that it was a free-standing concert.

We were so glad we were allowed to bring our cameras in!

Me and Izaeel, thrilled that we scored ourselves second row spots!

Opening act by Melanie Horsnell

Oh my gosh, it was the longest opening act I've ever witnessed. I personally thought she had a beautiful voice but she failed to engage the crowd. After the third song, everyone got really restless. We had to endure almost 45 mins of her monotonous singing. We suspected she probably sang her entire album at that rate.

After she finally got off the stage, we had to wait another half an hour. Good grief, our legs and back were so sore by then. Nonetheless, all was forgotten by the time Jason finally came on at 9:30pm! Yipee!

Jason opens with an oldie but goodie - The Remedy

Jamming it with Toca Rivera

Finishing off with my favourite song - Life is Wonderful

Here's a clip I took at the start - Jason warming up the crowd. I've got another one of him singing Life is Wonderful but it's taking me ages to upload to Youtube. :( Hopefully I'll get that up soon so you can see it.

My verdict? Jason wowed the crowd as expected but I personally felt his overall performance was a bit "rushed". He mingled with his audience but he did it much better at the Mosaic Festival in Singapore. I think the long opening act coupled with my aching legs and back played a big part in making the experience less than perfect.

But being the fan that I am, I'm so happy I went! Thanks Izaeel for going with me - and Ally, we missed you heaps! This post is for you. Wish you were here...

A country drive

It was the EkkA public holiday yesterday for Brisbane – the perfect opportunity to drag Pen with me away from our house. (We’ve moved by the way!) We’ve been burying ourselves in house stuff for the past month or so ever since our move and I was getting really sick of it.

We decided to take a country drive to Boonah, a small, old town in Southeast Queensland with stunning mountain scenery. We felt a bit iffy on our way there as the surroundings looked really deserted. When we eventually arrived at the “heart” of Boonah city, we felt like we had ventured into a ghost town. It wasn’t a public holiday there and yet you could count the number of people walking around town with your fingers.

It was fascinating when we walked into the local Lions club for lunch. It was like being taken back into time. The diner was buzzing with 70s tunes, the furniture was old and the lady in charge was the waitress, chef and cashier all at once. Funny enough, I personally thought WE were the tourist attraction instead of the town itself. It was probably not everyday the locals see Asians in the community.

How strange, I thought – how do people live here? On the surface, there doesn't seem like there's much to do. There’s no traffic lights and no street lamps anywhere, so I’m guessing people don’t really go out at night. Surely we didn’t drive all the way from Brisbane just to see a deserted town? We had to hold back from asking the locals where the famous Scenic Rim was for fear they might tell us we were staring right at it!

Our patience paid off after we finally found the visitors centre. And no, the Scenic Rim wasn’t that sleepy town we had lunch in – it is actually an arc of spectacular mountains lying on the boundaries of Boonah. We didn’t have time to see all the mountains and certainly didn’t have the right attire to bushwalk our way to the top. So we opted for a simple trail at Mount French and a drive to Lake Moogerah.

It was then that we realised just how beautifully untouched the place is. Pen and I thoroughly enjoyed our time off there. It was so good to escape from the bustling city and spend some quality time with each other in a true “return to nature” style. We’ll be back with our trackies and hiking shoes!

It's Hollywood! (almost)

Boonah City - parked cars aplenty, but where are the people?

A local diner

Boonah's petrol kiosk with only one pump

Local fruit shop

Pen considers moving to Boonah - I don't think so darling.

Setting out on our trail walk

Made it to the top of Mount French!

Considering there's not a single soul in sight, we had to take our own photo.

Do the Japanese thing, he said...

Which way back?

On the bush trail

Made it to Lake Moogerah

Pen attempting to indicate the water level in the dam

Juicy Anticipation

Today! I get my Juicy Couture bag today and I cannot wait to get home to see it!

I’ve been pining for a Juicy bag ever since I realised how cute and preppy the brand’s products are. Didn’t take long for me to set my eyes on the Baby Fluffy Velour bag. I lurrrrve the velour material and soft leather base. It’s soooo pretty!

It’s selling at a ridiculous amount of AUD$325 at David Jones and I couldn’t bear to pay so much for it when it’s only retailing at US$185 in America. So Pen came to the rescue! He got his work associate in Seattle to buy the bag for me and hold on to it until one of their guys could meet up with Pen in Japan. Best part was, this bag happened to be on special at the store and it only came up to about US$120. OOoooooh, score!

And as if this wasn’t good enough, my sweetheart of a husband bought me the Juicy perfume to go with the bag on our wedding anniversary. :) Oh, I’m in couture bliss!

Jazzing up an Anniversary

Yesterday was our one-year wedding anniversary and we celebrated by going to see Michael Bublé sing at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre. It was an amazing night and extra special to Pen and I because we used quite a few of his songs at our wedding ceremony and reception last year.

As expected, Bublé gave a spectacular performance and connected with the audience exceptionally well. My favourite song for the night had got to be Me and Mrs Jones. Unfortunately for Pen, his much anticipated Home was ruined by the crowd’s joyful cheers when a photo slideshow of Michael in Brisbane appeared on the screen. To make things worse, we could only see a fraction of the screen as we were seated towards the corner of the stage.

What was truly worth mentioning though, was the opening act by Naturally Seven. They are an award-winning gospel, rhythm and blues, jazz and soul vocal play crew from New York City. Their performance blew everyone away – the “instruments” (drums, bass, electric guitar, etc) you hear in their songs are all their voices! You really have to see it to believe it. See the You Tube video below.



Photos of our night out:

Quick dinner at Wagamama before driving to the Entertainment Centre at Boondall

Tucking into some Japanese

Our tickets!

Happy snaps while waiting for Michael

Standing at our corner seats

Opening performance by Naturally Seven

Bublé struts his stuff

Me with Roger (Rap) and Garfield (Harmonica) from Naturally Seven, at the autograph session after the concert

Pen and Armand, the bass guy

Can’t believe we’ve been married for one whole year! It still feels like we just got married a few months ago. How time flies. God has blessed us so much over the past few months and has kept our relationship going stronger day by day. More exciting times ahead I’m sure, as we prepare to move into our new house in the next few months.

Wedding Bells in Sydney

Just got back from Sydney on Sunday evening – somehow this trip really drained me out. Maybe it was because our schedule for the weekend was really tight or perhaps it was my body fighting extremely hard not to fall sick. The bumpy flights did not help at all; did I mention I hate flying?

Pen and I went down to Sydney to attend our friend James’ wedding. The wedding was on Saturday but we flew down on Friday evening to get ourselves settled in first. Poor Pen fell sick on Wednesday – so apart from taking care of him and making sure he takes his medicine regularly, I was also desperately fending the virus from myself. Praise God for watching over us! Pen recovered speedily over the weekend and I fortunately didn’t feel too much under the weather.

We stayed in North Sydney, at the Rydges. This place sure brought back some memories – same time last year, I lived in North Sydney for two weeks by myself while working for LEWIS Sydney. Hence, I became quite the “local” and ended up being the better guide for our hunt for breakfast on Saturday morning.

Best part was, the church where James and Roberta got married, St Thomas Anglican Church, was just up the road from our hotel, a mere 5 minutes walk. It was such a gorgeous-looking church with such intricate details that there was absolutely no need to decorate the sanctuary. The landscaping outdoors also made it a perfect picture opportunity for a wedding. After the ceremony, we briefly scanned the grounds for familiar faces from Pen’s Sydney church. A few photos and some refreshments later, we jetted off to...

Paddington! I was soooooo excited because I’ve heard so much about the markets and boutiques there and couldn’t wait to get my hands on some unique finds. We had an interesting journey there though. Pen got a bit lost driving and we ended up at a suburb near Paddington and thought we were at the right place when we saw some tents set up there. We parked, got out of the car and walked towards the “market”. Wasn’t long till we noticed something was amiss – the surrounding looked dodgy and we found ourselves in the midst of a police and thief chase. (A woman had her mobile snatched off her hands and a couple of policemen had just caught the alleged thief by the collar.) Riiiight. Turned out we were at Kings Cross* and the “market” was a mini food carnival.

When we finally found our way to Paddington, I was absolutely stoked to see streets and streets and streets of boutiques. And the markets totally lived up to my expectations. The only downside was we only had about two hours to explore because we had the wedding dinner to attend. Arghh, I knew it was impossible to cover this much ground in two hours, so my joy quickly turned into disappointment. And because of the time constraint, I had to choose between focussing on shopping or taking photos AND shopping, which would greatly reduced my ability to concentrate. So guess which one I chose?

When our time was up, Pen had to drag me away from the splendour that was Paddington. Well, at least I didn’t leave the place empty-handed – I bought a ton of stuff from Make Up Store and a chunky silver ring from the markets. I was very happy with my jewellery purchase and I must say I was glad to have Pen with me as he always does all the bargaining for me! Paddington is an amazing shopping strip and I am kicking myself for not stepping foot into that suburb during my previous trips to Sydney. I will be back.

And oh yes, the wedding dinner was a ball too. Heh.

*Similar to Singapore’s Geylang

Eating at Harry's Cafe de Wheels on Friday night, a push cart famous for its hotdogs

Breakfast at a cafe in North Sydney

At St Thomas Anglican Church - The bridal party and parents after signing the registry

We missed out on the group photo (too busy eating) so we got a private one taken with Roberta and James

L - Susie, Ivan, me and Pen

Wedding dinner at Zilver Restaurant, very good Chinese food. There were suckling roast pig, mock shark's fin, abalone, etc.
L - Pen, Me, Amanda and Luke

Our table
Top L - Luke, James, Ivan, Kris, Susie and Amanda
Bottom L - Susie, me and Pen

Me and Pen

We're going trigger happy!

The boys - Pen, James (groom), Wilson, Luke, James and Kris