of yayness!

=D GOT MY SNOW JACKET!!!! ^______________^ YAY!!!!

I saw it online several weeks ago and while I loved the design of the jacket I was a bit iffy on the pinstripes (being a non-pinstripe kinda gal), so I put it out of mind. On that one-dayer trip while we were perusing in Rhythm, I actually found the Orage Kai … and Ruby found it in my size!!! O_O

It was all great and everything, until we saw the price: $650. @_@ You got to be kidding me… that’s just nuts.

Anywho, had the bright idea of trying to find it online for something more within my budget and had massive issues trying to find it. It didn’t help that it was last season’s gear *and* because everything’s been on sale for a while, it’s all out of stock. The only place where I found it in stock was ProctorJones.com… where sadly, they didn’t have it in stock either!!! Bah!!!

So… $650 for the colour I want… oooooor… US$179 + US$50 delivered in a different colour? Hmmm…

Guess which option I took? lol. Yeah, I’m a cheap asian. But the bone still looks quite decent, no? ^_________________^

of snows, a belated birthday, and visiting old family friends

I’ve often been slightly derisive of Ram’s obsession with the snow, especially when he goes off to 1-day trips to Thredbo or Perisher Blue. I mean, who in their right minds would leave Sydney at 2am, get to Cooma to hire necessities at about 5am-ish, snowboard all day, and get home at around 12am?!?! Yeah! I know! It’s just nuts right?

*sighs*

I’m not sure what it was, perhaps my resistance to 1-dayers was slowly corroded by Ram’s snow enthusiasm, but I foolishly gave in and suggested a 1-dayer to Ram. His reaction was quite amusing: felt all light-headed and woozy, not sure if he read my message right.

Anywho… after a couple of dramas (Ben Yee piked on us and there was a miscommunication with times and such in picking Ruby up), we picked up Ruby at 1:30am, stopped by Ram’s place to pick up his gear and set off for the snows.

I was suppose to take the last leg of the trip, only I couldn’t sleep – catching about 45 minutes in total before we got to Jindy. We popped by the place Carina was staying at (Pender Lea Chalets, the same place we stayed at when we first started snowboarding!), where I managed to grab a couple of minutes of sleep and some more in the car on the way there.

It was raining when I woke up in Thredbo’s carpark. Feeling out of sorts, tired, and grumpy, I got ready to hit the slopes. My grumpiness didn’t dissipate until going up for our second run. The first run was on Friday Flats – both Ruby and I wanted to ease into it before going up the mountain. I found that I’ve somehow forgotten to do toe-side and so was a bit worried.

It was a heck of a lot of fun and I fretted over nothing about the toe-side, as while it was sloppy, I could do it (yay!). The first time I snowboarded was at Thredbo several years ago and I haven’t been back since. I found that the runs were so much easier, comparatively speaking to last time, especially the dreaded Traverse.

Ram wanted to go across the mountain to do the Supertrail, but I baulked – remembering the awful, awful and most frustrating time I had doing the bloody thing. A mini-argument ensued, wherein I gave in and sulked on the way there… and somehow, some where along the traverse (which also passed through 2 t-bars – who thought that was a good idea, huh?), I was enjoying myself. And before I knew it, I was through! O_O I actually ended up waiting for Ram and Ruby at the end before heading down the Supertrail.

By about 11am, the weather got worse: it rained that little bit harder, so it was snowing that little bit harder up top, and the wind had picked up too… enough to make the snow go sideways.

We kind of got lost on our way to High Noon and found this little hut out in the middle of nowhere. We went in to decided what to do and get out of the stinging snow… oh, and because Ram needed to drop the kids off. =P

I did not realise how wet I was until I was squeezing water out of my gloves and seeing Ruby’s entire wet front. While we were trying to warm up and get dry (*snorts* yeah right), we manage to contact Sean and Chang and decided to go down and meet up with them to have lunch.

Putting on those wet gloves wasn’t really the best idea I’ve had; they turned my hands into blocks of ice.

By the time we had lunch and was semi-dry, sitting by the gas fire in the Thredbo Alpine Hotel, it was about 1:15pm. Ruby was contemplating of going back out there at about 2pm. Not wanting her to go by herself, I found myself weighing my conscience with my desire to be dry and warm. Unfortunately, my conscience lost and I fell asleep by the fire, as Ruby braved the blizzardy conditions. Ram stayed back too, chatting with the group Sean and Chang came with.

She took the CB radio handset though, just to be on the safe side… I mean… look at the webcam history at Merritts!

Ruby came back at about 3:30, wet to the core. She reported that it was god-awful up top, perfect powder in the middle, and slushy at the bottom. Having done the Supertrail twice, she didn’t think it was worth it going back up. (About time!)

After lounging around and the guys being stupid (the whole Tequila shot thing, forgot what they called it, but it’d be: snort a line of a salt, squeeze lemon in the eye, and shoot down the Tequila), we parted from the group and caught the bus back to Friday Flats. Sadly, we got off at the wrong stop (thanks Ram) and had to walk the rest of the way to the car… in the rain (it didn’t stop raining the entire time, did I tell you?).

I took the first leg home, seeing I didn’t drive at all going down (I felt so guilty because of that), and found that I stayed awake quite easily when I was eating. =.=;; When I stopped because a) I was getting full, b) I had finished all of the savoury snacks, and c) the sweet snacks were making me feel ill, I started to get really really sleepy. It really didn’t help that it was still raining and going past massive trucks that spit out fine mist from their gazillion tires was freaky because all you can see for several heartbeats is water and the glow of lights. >_<

So my first one dayer wasn’t in the best of conditions, but it was still quite fun and memorable. Ruby’s and my arms were strangely sore for a couple of days, sore enough for me to skip body balance class on Tuesday. *sighs*

Tien’s house-sitting for Pete and Mel (ex-Proxima people) in Neutral Bay until August, so Myle organised a little dinner to belatedly celebrate her birthday and keep her company for most of the night.

We dined at CJ’s Cafe Restaurant, where its speciality is fondue. We had the 2-course fondue: entree was swiss cheese with white wine and cubes of Vienna bread and main was beef, or chicken, or beef and chicken with 4 different types of sauce (sweet chilli, garlic, mustard, and spicy tomato). Dessert was chocolate fondue with seasonal fruits and marshmallows.

When the waitress (who we suspect is also the co-owner of the place) noticed the little Bon-Bon boxes (they looked like mini presents!), she asked what we were celebrating. We told her Tien’s birthday and Helen’s new job (she’s working for Westfields now), and when dessert came out, she brought out a plate of marshmallows and caramel eclairs with a candle in the centre marshmallow. =) How sweet was that?

Anywho, food was quite good and service was outstanding – she was so attentive and friendly. We belated realised that we smelt like deep fried something afterwards when we were checking out Pete and Mel’s place (which was heaps nice and has an almost perfect view of the harbour if it weren’t for the trees).

After hearing so much about Heath Ledger’s performance in the Dark Knight and how great the overall movie is, I had high expectations for it. I was a bit worried I was going to be let down by the hype, so I tried to swallow my doubts and expectations when I agreed with Sam to see it in the Imax on Thursday.

I would have to say: O…M…G… The Dark Knight was a brilliant movie. I would rave on and on about it, but quite frankly I am quite tired of doing so, but would have you know that the Imax experience really added something. Absolutely loved it.

I took mum down to Canberra to visit an old family friend yesterday. As they chatted and caught up with things, I spent my day reading a trashy romance novel (I can’t help it! They’re strangely addictive =.= bah). They’ve got the most amazing electric blanket – it warmed up so quickly and it only has two on settings: 75 mins and 12 hrs and of course you could still adjust the temperature. I want one! lol But when I think about replacing my electric blanket, I feel bad because it still works, but it’s just so… slow in warming up =.= Also, it doesn’t have a timer, so if I forget to turn it off, I’d wake up all sweaty and gross. >_<

Both the husband and wife are amazing cooks. We had pho when we arrived, then tom yum soup with noodles for dinner (they had to cook a separate pot for me because I can’t hack chilli =( felt so bad about that), and a Sara Lee crumble for dessert. Yum. Breakfast was home-made (from scratch!) sausage rolls and pizza-subs.

On our way home, we suddenly were hit by a really, really hard downpour – so hard that I could barely see the truck in front of me even though the windscreen wipers were at the highest setting. I realised that the raindrops looked weird when they splattered themselves on the windscreen… it wasn’t really rain, it was sleet! A whole bunch of ice had accumulated around the wipers. lol.

It was a bit freaky, but it was kinda cool at the same time. =P

of meeting old friends and festival of the stars part 2

It was Shara’s birthday on Friday, so I had ordered 2 dozen custom-made babycakes for her… which I realised quite belatedly would look not all that appealing if presented in its box. I brightened at the idea of a mini, 2-tier cake stand and went to Victoria’s Basement to get one… only the ones I found that were at a reasonable cost were so for a reason (they were rather hideous). I ended up getting a plain white, but with an air of slight modern-ness, plate at the bargin price of $9.95.

Anywho, she loved the flowers, which I felt looked like more of a bridesmaid bouquet after I had bought it (=_=), bah, and she loved the babycakes that Claudie and I positioned to read: SE. lol

Ram met up with Rowan at Bar 333 and then ambled down to meet up with me outside my work. I haven’t seen Rowan since he left for Spain or Mexico, somewhere overseas that speaks Spanish (I’m quite sure), which was about a year and a half ago.

We ended up strolling down to Blackbird for some dinner and dessert. Rowan had the chicken burger, ram the mexican lamb pizza, and me the scotch fillet with ratatouille and baked potatoes. Then for dessert, Rowan struggled through his Tiramisu, while Ram and I “shared” the cookies and cream cheesecake. Yum!

It was good catching up with Rowan and just basically chilling out ^_^

We were walking to Town Hall station through the PWC building’s thoroughfare bridge thingy when we encountered a blocked off escalator… which sucked because it was ours, going up, and the only one that was operating was the one going down.

There were these girls waiting for the elevator, but it seemed like they’ve been there for a while, so I mischievously suggested that we run up the escalator. The boys were a bit incredulous at my suggestion, but were pleased at the chance of being slightly toolish.

LOL So there we were, running up the escalator (which was actually really tiring, especially on a full stomach), and Rowan’s breathing down my neck, gleefully shouting, “I’m catching up!! I’m going to beat you!!”

I looked up to see how much torture I had to go through to reach the end (only to be a bit shocked, slightly dismayed, and twinged of guilt to find that there were a couple of girls at the top who were going to use the escalators), Rowan stomped by cackling, I put my head down to try put on more speed, and then noticed that he had placed a foot wrongly… and he came down hard. >_<

The girls at the top gasped, Rowan manfully got up and kept going, and I tried really hard not to expire from laughter until I fully reached the top. It was ironic because he had cautioned us to be careful just as I leaped onto the escalator.

Man, running up an escalator on a full stomach wasn't exactly the best of ideas... but it was fun =D haha Though I was rather paying for it by feeling quite ill afterwards.

I stupidly had left these inner gloves at work because I didn’t want to carry them around last night, but I had totally forgotten that we’re planning to do a 1-dayer on tomorrow. So we had to go into the city just for the gloves. *sighs* We ended up buying “snowboard” socks as well because somehow my long, thin socks have disappeared and all the others are either really thick or anklets. Sounds really gimmicky, but we’ll see how they go. They’re surprisingly expensive! $53, 44 bucks… gah. Found one that was on sale for 19.95! lol

Anywho, because of that, we were late to RPG’s Festival of the Stars: Part 2 at Olympic Park. The gang had already started without us with the twirling of the glowsticks and whatnot. While we missed out on a sunset, we manage to get the moonrise, which was quite huge and cheesy yellow.

Not being able to ignore our hunger any longer, we packed up and headed to Strathfield for some Korean. Mind you, we didn’t start heading off til about 8pm T_T so so so hungry!

Chung was attacked suddenly by what looked like a bitch of a migraine after he’d finish his dinner. Oddly enough, Ram felt like he had a headache coming on after he had finished his kimchi fried rice. We joked that Chung, who had two fingers pressed to his right temple, was secretly willing his headache to go to Ram. XD

There was some misunderstanding at what time we were suppose to pick up Ruby, but we worked it out. She’s suppose to call me when she’s back home so we can head off to pick her up, rest up some more at Ram’s place and then head off at 2am.

It’s 40 minutes past the time she said she’d be back home, I’ve sms’ed her a gentle reminder to call us when she’s home, and Ram’s snoring away in the background.

The weather’s suppose to be heaps windy tomorrow – hopefully it won’t be so windy that the chairlifts have to close or blow us off the slope =.=

of dat’s birthday dinner

We celebrated Dat’s birthday a bit belatedly at Good Luck Chinese Restaurant in Enfield/Ashfield tonight. Yay! Peking Duck!! =D Been craving it for these past couple of weeks.

I met up with Myle, Ruby, and Sokhan (the WA crew! lol) at Wynyard station and boy, it was awfully packed with pilgrims – the train was practically bursting at the seams. While it wasn’t *that* long of a trip to Ashfield, it did feel like forever. It kind of didn’t help to pass the time chatting because of this group of Italian pilgrims singing at the top of their voices randomly… and arguing which train station they’re suppose to get off at. =_= pwned.

After a little mix-up of which side of the station Ed was waiting for us at, we arrived at the restaurant super early. Yeah okay, so we didn’t really – we got there about 30 minutes before we were suppose to. =P

Feeling quite peckish, we decided to order a couple of entrees whilst waiting for the others to come. Ruby ordered a dessert: sweet corn congee, but when it came out it was like… that’s not congee *taste dish* that… that doesn’t taste like anything! What the heck. It was a very odd dish. It was left mostly unfinished after trying to make it more flavoursome with sugar, then hoy sin sauce, then vinegar, then chilli, and well.. you get my drift. She tried pretty much all the condiments on our table, but it was still woefully inadequately tasty.

We were there for ages, just chatting and eating and eating and eating… until we were the last ones there (we were also almost the first ones there too!). The staff there (I think it might have been a family-owned and run business?) besides being heaps nice, surprisingly left us alone and didn’t kick us out!

Took a couple of almost fail group shots (damn prime’s not very good for that) and Dat kindly gave Ruby and I a lift back to Holsworthy station.

I warned Ruby that after the cocooning warmth of Dat’s car, my car will be a freezer in comparison, and she waved it away nonchalantly, saying that “it should be okay”. Yeah no. She just couldn’t believe how cold my car was and poor thing was shivering the entire way home (my heater also sucks). I told her what Ram noticed the other day: it’s colder in the car than outside. That’s weird right? It’s not suppose to do that, yeah? Yeah… I don’t know. =_=;;

of dinners

Last night was dinner with Ram’s family and Nams at Maya da dhaba in Surry Hills. It was easily one of the best Indian food I’ve had. We had Paneer Makhani (Paneer and peas in creamy tomato sauce), Dal Makhani (Lentils cooked Maya Style), Shabnam Curry (Delicious curry with fresh mushrooms and peas) with basmati rice and garlic/cheese/plain naan. There were some other curries we had, but I can’t seem to find it on the online menu or remember their names lol. The only thing that was missing was dessert as we went straight home afterwards.

When the dishes came out, it didn’t seem enough for 6 hungry people, but it was… Ram and I totally food-coma’ed on the way home – so glad that one of us weren’t driving for once! hehe

I kinda went on a book binge these past couple of days. I bought The Tale of Despereaux, Lamplighter (gorgeous hardback book cover that I can’t find on Amazon, so I gotta scan my version in… meh to pedanticness), and books 1, 2, and 4 of the The Immortals Quartet by Tamora Pierce.

Gah, trying to find the Point Fantasy version of the quartet was honestly a pain the patoot. It is the only edition with decent front covers, matches the book I already have, and wouldn’t you know it… they’re out of print. So while the other editions are readily available everywhere and for cheap, these ones are kind of expensive. I mean, just one of the books was selling for 507 bucks! WTH!? Bah I say.

I managed to find book 1 for 10 bucks delivered on ebay, book 2 and 4 were from abebooks about 18 and 25 bucks delivered, respectively. Okay… so I’ve paid more for the Cornish book 2 ($30), but it’s new and it’s hardcover. I think I’ve just been spoilt by finding bargains on books – Cornish’s book 1 was 12 bucks… HARDCOVER!!! Muhahahahha XD

Okay… no more t-shirts from threadless (even though I already have 2 shirts lined up haha) and no more books. >_< Must save.

Tonight was our first eatshowandtell dinner, which we decided to have at New Shanghai Chinese Restaurant in Ashfield.

I mused, on the way there, that it’ll be pretty funny when a dish comes, 3 dslrs would come whipping out to capture it while it’s still steaming hot. Linda groaned, “Oh my God, this is going to be so embarrassing!! Do you all have to take photos?” LOL. And poor thing, got embarrassed she did.

I’ll link to the review post when it comes up… which would be hopefully soon (yes, we’re still working on our Tetsuya’s post =.= baaaah).

Afterwards, we had baklava at a corner kebab place, which really topped our night off nicely.

of food and stars

Somehow most of my weekends involve nom-nom-ing (on food) with friends – not that I’m complaining mind you – just an observation I just made in trying to recall what I did over the weekend (I’m quite sure you guys have already figured that out way ahead of me XD haha).

Sooo, I guess it doesn’t come as a surprise that Saturday saw me at Pancakes on the Rocks with my photography group (RPGers – Random Photography Group lol) for dinner before our Festival of the Stars thing at the Sydney Observatory.

I was in a bit of a dilemma because practically every single time I go to Pancakes I always get the Devil’s Delight. I just can’t resist it! It’s so yummy and the times I’ve had something else, I’m always disappointed and yearning for that sweet, sweet chocolate pancake. Only… it’s not quite the best thing to have for dinner, no?

But I had it anyways. =P

We didn’t take many photos when we were at the Observatory – it turned out to be more of a social outing hehe. We went to a lecture on the Milky Way and radio astronomy, which was quite interesting (but I think a couple of the guys found it a bit dry), and a brief ghost tour.

This lady was handing out flashlights, but paused when I approached her.

“Are you with someone?” Puzzled and thinking of the RPGers, I replied bemusedly, “Yes?” After another moment of hesitation, she handed me the torch, but not before I hear Ram say to her, “It’s okay, she’s an adult.”

It took me a while, but it finally sank in and I got rather embarrassed. >_<

The ghost tour was a bit scary, but only because I psych myself out entirely too well. The highlight of the night for us was the 3D Space Theatre/Planetarium thing; that was really awesome.

We decided to surprise Helen with a non-birthday yumcha thing on Sunday (her birthday was yesterday). She managed to work out that we were surprising her because she got hungry at 11, but Michael wouldn’t let her eat… and so she eventually sussed the surprise out. lol

We ate at Rhodes Phoenix – they have the best mango pancake. I usually don’t like them, but these were stumpier than normal and so fat with yummy whipped green and almost teeth-chilling mango slice. *drools* waaah. They also had pretty decent mango pudding and a first I’ve had at yum cha (or anywhere else really): Mango and Melon Sago. Scrumptious!

Afterwards, most of us headed to Helen’s and Michael’s place – they’ve been renovating their house for a couple of months now and it’s starting to shape up. I love to do the whole interior decorating thing, and so does Ruby (especially the painting bits, she’s mad about that), so we were rather brimming over with ideas on what they could do… well okay, just for the living room because Helen asked =P

of not being able to think of a title

It seemed like any other day, the Tuesday that’s just gone by, Ram was running late and I missed the train I wanted to catch, so I was rather in a grumpy mood.

The train was already at the station when we got there. “Do you think the train’s just teasing us?” Ram asked, referring to the possibility that if we ran for it, it would pull out as soon as we reached the platform.

Surprisingly, it was still there when we got there.

Hmm.

Seeing how full it was, we thought to catch the next train… until everyone got off the train.

There was a crazy amount of people on the platform – I didn’t realise how many people a train could actually hold. The train conductor had announced that everyone in the first carriage should evacuate, which was followed by *everyone* needing to evacuate the train. We found out later that there was smoke in the ventilation system in the first carriage caused by an electrical fault and one lady had to be treated for smoke inhalation.

We were advised to go to other stations to reach the city and yeah, it didn’t seem like it was going to go anywhere soon. So we carpooled to East Hills Station and caught the all stations train to the city – gah it felt like it took forever.

It was so ironic because I woke up early to get to work early to get my tasks done… and even if I did go ahead to the station without Ram, I would have still ended up at work at the same time as normal… cuz it was my intended train that caught on fire. T_T

Dung’s leaving for a 6-week gallivant around Europe next week, so she organised a dinner at Bavarian Bier Cafe last night. I didn’t really get to talk much to Dung, but it was quite fun catching up with Duy, as well as making my acquaintance with Jason (he’s a funny bloke ^_^).

Poor guy kept coming into our conversation at the wrong times and he’d be like, “Eerrr… did I just really hear that? … What?” lol I think I got a bit mischievous and veered slightly to umm.. questionable topics, then slyly look at him to see if he was listening in. I thought it was quite amusing when he asked if I “swing that way *hastily adds* because really it’s okay if you do” all because I was merely commenting on some gurl’s fine legs (but sadly, no ass). “I appreciate all forms of beauty,” I tried to explain, laughing.

Ash invited us to come to Lowenbrau to celebrate his birthday. By the time we got there, which was around 9.30pm, he was so sloshed. XD hahha We didn’t stay very long though before we headed home.