Easter Long Weekend!!

March was a wonderful month full of long weekends, short weekdays (i.e. less work days wee!! We had 3 short work weeks in a row with Labour Day and the long Easter break. Work was still crazy busy though but we still found time to catch up with friends!

It was a breezy Saturday afternoon, where the boys (Jem and Sai B) kicked around and chased the ball with some of the Leicester boys & others. Sharon and Gie took the chance to spend some girly time shopping & chatting. We had a great time shopping for Easter gifts & admiring chocolate bunnies and giant eggs; it sure took ALOT of self control to not buy up the entire store of yummy chocs but we came out with our wallets (and waistlines) still in tact. Although, we did cave in at Supre... Supre was having a crazy sale with clothes going for $5 and dresses going for $10 to $15! After all the walking around, Sharon and Gie sat down to a nice conversation with our cuppas of iced choc & iced mocha.

When the boys joined the gals, korean was on the menu for dinner and we headed off for some serious korean barbies! We yakked and yakked and before we knew it, dinner ended at 10.30pm! Amazingly, we still had room for dessert and so it was - Hardware Lane for cakes and more "coffee" with Maddy & Kelvin. Overall, it was a wonderful evening of pleasant company & the perfect prelude to Easter!


Korean Bbq with SaiB and Sharon.

Jem n Gie

Sharon n Saib

Leen had organized Easter dinner at her place on Saturday night. So, Jem and Gie decided to put heart into the dessert contribution and attempted baking some sweets! On the menu was Jem's specialty - Sugee cake and Gie made bread pudding! For those of you (like Gie) who are clueless what "sugee" is, it is a type of wheat, otherwise known as samolina (which incidentally, does not give me any better idea of what it is!). Apparently, our grandparents or parents would know it.. maybe just not the people who think good cakes are "Awfully Chocolate", "Greccos - Mars Bar cheesecake" or "Brubakers".


Baker Jem

A 1st attempt at Sugee cake - turned out pretty well!

Bread pudding in the making

And so, it was another of Leen's very successful house parties! Laksa was the highlight of the menu and it was accompanied with Edwin's home made chicken pies, po piah, fried chicken and finished off with Dao Suan,easter eggs & Jem & Gie's cake attempts! Thanks everyone for such a cosy evening & good sport with our desserts!


Edwin with his special yummy entree chicken pie


All waiting for the big feast at Leen's house

Yummy Laksa prepared by master chef Leen


Chilling after dinner

Bakers Jem n Gie

Gie and Sharon

Sunday afternoon was another big cook up attempt for Gie! The challenge was to fry enough bee hoon for 5 hungry boys who came over for some laps in the pool. Vijay made curry so that meal turned out to be a really good & satisfying one! The after dinner plans include a rerun of The Last of the Mohicans, good game of Cranium & football back at Leicester Gardens!


Leicester boys playing Cranium.

Moomba Festival

It was Moomba festival in the beginning of March as well as labour day on Monday which means long weekend!!!woo hoo.. Moomba is basically a water festival in Melbourne. There were nice fireworks on all three nights of the weekend as well as an annual parade along Swanston Street. Nice carnivals and rides filled the banks of the Yarra river, it was basically a small heaven for kids (gie). There were nice big stuff toys to be won, like a big Homer or Bart Simpson or Kermit the Frog or a nice Big bear. I tried hard to win something but to no avail! Sigh. Bluff money one!hhahaha. Anyway, it was a good nice night out, we went for the fireworks on 2 nights and walked twice round the yarra and back home. It was a nice and great weekend, here are pictures to enjoy.


Crazy rides on background

Better shot

Try to win a toy for girlfriend in the end lose all the money

Ferris wheeeeeeeellll.

Lying on the grass watching the works

Nicer fireworks

Visit of Mr Ong

We got a surprise email on Thursday night from Jenson, informing that he "may" visit us that very weekend! Not wanting to get our hopes high, we decided to treat it as nothing. This is bcoz Ong cannot be confirmed on the flight unless there is an available seat since he is buying at staff price. So jealous!! But very uncertain! So, early Saturday morning (about 1.30am), we get a sms from Ong saying he managed to get on the 11pm flight and will be arriving that very morning! We could finally sleep in peace and woke up early the next morning to prepare for his arrival.

It was really surreal that day with Ong's grand arrival and it felt really good to see a familiar face and such a good friend here in Melbourne. We had a good catch up over Yum Cha at Shark's Fin Inn and then, a week full of activities followed..


Reunion yumcha at Shark's Fin Inn

The very next day, we planned a fishing trip to Mornington after attending mass at St Patrick's Cathedral. Ong wasn't very good at fishing, and er, neither were we that day! Between the 3 of us, we only managed to catch about 7-8 fishes, and all flatheads!! Ong and Gie sat out front of the boat which was great, enjoying the good weather and picturesque view. Jem was afraid he'll fall into the sea so he stayed safe in the boat! We did catch up again for some seal views! hee


Boys @ the Cathedral


Great company once again!


Picture perfect!


Dance then.. wherever you may be!


Posing with Desmond's big catch!


Ong finally caught one!!


Hush broz at Sea!


Can you spot the seals?

The rest of the week flew by with after-work plans. Unfortunately, Gie really fell sick during Ong's visit so the sickies were spent sleeping and trying to get better. On the after-work hours, we brought Ong to touristy places including a night at Crowne - where Ong left $10 richer and Jem slightly poorer. But nevermind! heh.. We also had a good time with Michelle and Pearle, who also had the privilege (? hee) of entertaining Ong!


Big Breaky at Brunswick Street with Michelle *yumm

It was a funny (on hindsight) story about the night we caught Russell Peters' stand up comedy act. We decided to have dinner at Greasy Joe's, Fang's recommendation for supa burgers at St Kilda's and came across the billboard for Russell Peters & Friends last night comedy act. The price tag was abit hefty but after some deliberation (Ok.. it was quite a long deliberation) we decided to go for it! It was about 7.45pm when we bought the tickets and thinking the show starts at 8.30pm, we thought we still had the time to have our greasy burgers. Well, that's what the lady selling the tickets told us. Putting too much trust on that old lady, none of us checked the tickets and when Jem said "if the show starts at 8.30, how come so many people waiting outside already?" Lo and behold, the show actually started at 7.30pm! We were quite pissed but had lil' choice so not wanting to spoil the rest of the night and waste the tickets, we wolfed down our giant burgers and rushed to the theatre. It turned out that it was money well spent as Russell Peters, Ahmed Ahmed & Joe Koy cracked us up for 3 hours! Strangely enough, Russell Peters the main act, wasn't the best that night! Our favourite was Joe Koy!


Russell Peters with Pearle.

Of coz you can't expect a trip with Ong without a night of clubbing! Or 2 nights in this case! And so it was, we went clubbing (for our first time in Melbourne actually!!) with the clubber Ong and had a pretty good time! No pictures were taken during clubbing but we did bring Ong to the infamous La Porchetta for dinner one of the before-clubbin nights. Sigh. Gie likes pasta & ang mo food but La Porchetta is seriously overkill!!


Pre-dinner drinks, backpacker style


Ong loves La Porchetta!


So does Jem.. but not Gie!!

Too soon we had to say "seeya later" to Ong and it was pretty sad to see him leave. The whole week passed like a dream. It was great having you around Ong and hope to catch ya again soon!