2007 - Tamat

Goodbye 2007.. an eventful year it was and tis blog site is the testimony of events for me. It is hard to believe that i managed to maintain tis blog for over a year, and more amazing that i managed to find things to post every week :-P It helps that Karen maintains her blog concurrently and i am particularly motivated by the growing community of people commenting on tis site ^_^ Seeing everyone's comments gives me the sense there is a thread of communication between us...a feelin that everyone is still here ^_^

Enough of being long winded.. here is the series of pictures from the long xmas-new year break. Feeling like a tourist again ^_^

Body and head have similar character ^_^

Our day at Taroonga Zoo. I must say.. tis zoo is really gud (not that i have been to many zoos..have only been to JB's and Spore zoo.. hee hee) But the views here are spectacular and the animals are active. A recommended tourist place if you have 1/2 a day to spare ^_^

New Year's Eve celebration..our journey started from Meadowbank train station. If you flip back to the to previous NYE 2007 blog, you will find a similar picture. It did feel like deja-vu to ivy and me tis year.

Boom boom again. Happy 2008! Every new year's fireworks seems less impressive from the last. I think i am getting immune to all tis... bad thing about aging is that things and moments impress us less with time. Funnily, when ivy and me watched the news of the world's NYE fireworks, Sydney's footage always look really gud. I suppose waiting for hours just for the few minutes of joy kinda wears you down during the moment.

Another shot of ta fireworks

The queue to get to the train station..dunno why we put ourselves thru all tis year in year out :-P

Xmas Images

To All Family and dear old friends.... thank you for your greetings. Ivy and me would like to wish everyone...

MERRY XMAS & A HAPPY NEW YEAR.... May all your new year resolutions be kept and happy moments grow in the coming new year ^_^

The following few images summarizes our xmas in Sydney thus far:

Company Korean Xmas dinner.. a few other guys are missing from the pix

"Candy House" as ivy calls it. It's just down the road from where we live. The owner actually collects "donation" from onlookers for his xmas decorations. People have a habit of ligthing up their homes here for Xmas.

Xmas display at David Jones

Shopping "crowd" in the city at 9pm

Sea of lights... the Xmas tree at Martin's Place

The Rock

Our little Xmas tree is up again^_^

The full title should read "The Rock International Church". That was the name of the church that ivy and me attended over the weekend. A friend of mine recommended the church. It's about 40members strong and predominantly Sporean's and Msia's. I honestly don't know how they came out with that name. Anyway, the sermon was a typical pre-xmas talk. I don't know why preachers like to focus on the so called "wisemen coming to visit the child in the manger.." and the habit of waving the bible saying the bible says so... Wisemen from 2000 years back aren't exactly wise by our current standards...a time when everything that goes wrong is the work of evil spirits and sacrifice is the cure of the day. What is written in the bible are the preceptions of the chosen ones... however, the chosen ones lived in a time when the earth was still square, gravity was not known and pumba from lion king had a better preception of planets than the wisemen had. I know my mum might disown me after reading this blog ^_^ Just thoughts and questions... if the gallows rather than a cross was used, will there be gallows in every church now?

Nan Tian

me at tiananmen square.. actually it's nan tian temple ^_^

aahh.. the smell reminds us of the festive season back home

welcome welcome

collage of little buddha statues

We finally took a drive out of Sydney over the weeked. Ivy has a cousin who married a thai guy and settled down in Wollongong. They opened a simple Thai restaurant there. Dropped over their place for a short visit. Would have posted pix of them but ivy refuses to allow me to post pix of her..sigh. Dropped over the nearby temple called Nan Tian Temple. I like that place. The design is clean and neat. The joss-stick smell reminds me so much of chinese new year time back home.

Beckham Galaxy

Bend it like spice boy (his goal scoring free kick)

The only reason why people came to see tis match

I need one of tis

Ta score tells it all.. not the final score though.. Sydney scored another goal but i was too lazy to update my pix ^_^

Work week was as chaotic as i predicted wif the absence of the accounts gal. The new gal is picking up real fast and tis week should be a lot better ^_^ The highlight of my week was the LA Galaxy vs Sydney FC match. I was given a free ticket to the match and was seated about 4 rows from the front ^_^ Amazingly, that's the 1st time i ever watched a live football match or even entered a stadium to watch anything.. really "sua ku". Boring game. The LA Galaxy guys barely ran and Beckham was strolling around the field most of the time. However, i did manage to get a few nice shots of him.. including a shot of him taking the goal scoring free kick. Sadly i didn't get to see the goal coz i was too busy trying to take his photo.. sigh.

Change

Our tour de meadowbank river crossing ^_^

Efforts to look young and think young ^_^ Dun ask me how she can solve ta rubik's cube tis way

A week of changes. Labour is back in power. Ivy and me were reminiscing our uni days when labour were in power then. Memories of trains not arriving and news of factories closing down coz of labour strikes.. high interest rates. We wonder why people have such short memories. Changes were happening at work too.. the accounts/admin/receptionist girl resigned and friday was her last day. I have grown to depend on her a lot.. i think too much. Anyway, this week should be a challenging work week. I have even roped in ivy to help me pick up phone calls for a few days until i get things sorted out in the office ^_^ Oz Idol was a disaster for us too.. the guy who we were supporting lost.. ah well.

What is art?

The Bondi beach annual outdoor art exhibition was on again. I posted some pix from this same event on my blog last year and here i am doing the same thing this year. Time flies.. soon it will be christmas again. It was a fun 2 hours walk and the walkways were crowded like mad as usual. Next week should be quite eventful too.. general election and Oz idol final.. haven't decided if we will camp outside the opera house to watch ta event ^_^ I have posted a series of photos showing people's reaction to the exhibits.. enjoy!

Rumah Pokok

People just gotta touch things

Flying with the giant (i have another picture angle of the giant's butt ^_^)

It ain't real

Is tat a mirror?

Blinding isn't it?

Apa itu?

Spiderman wanna-be

They look wierd

Witches Brew

Anything wrong wif this??

For some reason Ivy finds it funny that i leave the slow cooker in the balcony when using it to boil soup. I hate stinking up the apartment and who cares what is on the balcony.. not to mention i "hide" the slow cooker in a milk crate ^_^ This week should an interesting work week.. the production schedule is amazingly filled up and the distiller machine died on me last friday. I am starting the week with heaps of orders but no water to pack.. Murphy Law rules!! I will kill Murphy if he appears in front of me ^_^

Slalom

a new fad.. basement carpark slalom..zoom zoom

A rained out weekend. It's beginning to feel a lot like winter...Luckily for us, our latest craze is slalom skating.. and even luckier, we have a huge basement carpark for us to practice ^_^ YouTube has been our source of inspiration for "techniques". However, these bad knees take forever to heal these days even after the simplest skating session... ah well.

Normality

Do i look wiser?? ^_^

The older we get, the fitter we get ^_^ (ivy's new wheels on ta left)

Meadowlife is back to normality ^_^ Ivy did a simple celebration for my bday..yippee. And i received well wishes from many of my close friends and family. Although we get bday greetings year in and year out, it gets extremely special when ta same bunch of people remembers your bday every year... i guess tat's wen you know who are keepers ^_^ Ivy and me were feeling tired and lethargic most of the week.. the price of our "adventures". But it's gud to be back together ^_^

A little taste of heaven

Day 1: Christchurch
Christchurch reminds me of Melbourne. The tram tracks, the old buildings and most of all the cold windy weather. What surprised me was the lack of humans and traffic. I suppose that is a good thing, but coming from Msia/Spore, it felt kinda spooky ^_^

what's she doin??

some park at the center of christchurch. ivy says this picture can be used in uni brouchers to con overseas students to study in christchurch ^_^

my "peaceful" cable car ride (anyone likes new transformers t-shirt??)

The view of christchurch harbour from the cable car station...pretty isn't it?

Day 2: Arthur's Pass
If you want to drive from the east coast of the south island (christchurch) to the west coast (dunno the name of the town), you will need to drive through the center range of mountains. The little pass thru the mountains is called Arthur's Pass. It was snowing when we arrived, and we weren't dressed for snowy weather. But the views of snow capped mountains and free flowing rivers was well worth the freeze ^_^

Snow capped mountains at Arthur's Pass. I should have taken this same photo the next day.. it was snowing and cloudy when we arrived, thus this gloomy looking pix.. but it was clear and sunny the next day. Was too lazy to pose for another pix ^_^

Our little pad at Arthur's Pass (Bealey's Hotel) Our window view was just picture perfect

Photo of the little shacks that we stayed in... cozy and simple

Day 3: Ad Hoc Travelling
We didn't plan our location for the 3rd day and landed up driving to a few towns on the map. Small towns in NZ are SMALL. You will be lucky to find more than 3 buildings in those little towns and a medium sized town is probably about 7 buildings. After our aimless driving adventure, we landed back in Christchurch :-P

See, Hear & Speak no evil. Just had to take tis pix ^_^
We visited a little nature reserve just outside Christchurch where they had local animals and Maori Presentations... typical tourist place

Day 4: Akaroa
Akaroa is about an hour's drive east of Christchurch. It's located on an ancient volcano crator which has erroded over time by the sea and is now a harbour town. A typical postcard town.. very cantik ^_^

Our room at Akaroa. Another picture perfect room view

french anyone?? (i wud like to say kay-poh, but ivy will most likely smack me ^_^)
Akaroa is a former french town.

The town of Akaroa

Day 5: Christchurch
Not much of a day coz our flight back was at 3pm. But ivy did manage to hunt down her "Manuka Honey". Not cheap at all. That honey had better have the abililty to extend our life. A really short and fast trip.... but will be fondly remembered ^_^

Spore Reception

alamak.. why so much smoke ^_^

Beddoe Gang (sort of)
Back Left: Khin and Mark (my ex spore colleagues), me & wife, wyang, katherine & yyee
Front Left: Khin's wife, ling & wife, mich & hubby

The new family
Back Left: Ray, me & wife, ivy's younger bro gf, ivy's younger bro
Front Left: my dad & mum, ivy's mum & dad

I have selected just a few pictures from our Spore reception to be posted here. We had 3 photographers, ivy's cousin (Wendy), my friend Scott and my cousin Raymond. Scott is still compiling his photos and i think i accidentally deleted the pictures taken by Raymond :-P My wife did look good at both receptions ^_^ I will post more photos in my Facebook account for those who are interested.

Quickie

Spore Reception Photo Collage.. taken and edited by Wendy (ivy's cousin)..she had a BIG Canon EOS30D camera.. put our hobbyist Nikon gang to shame :-P

Just a quick blog entry. Haven't had the time to edit the Spore dinner reception photos. For the time being, I will only post a collage pix of the night that was done up by Ivy's cousin. Ivy put in a lot of effort to make the spore reception special and it did look really nice. The big difference btw the spore reception from the JB's was that most of the guest arrived really LATE! Must be a spore thing. It was really nice catching up with the old beddoe gang.. will post pix of them next week. Flying back to Sydney in a few hours time and heading to NZ after that. I need more Zzzzz ^_^