Gong Xi Fa Cai

Happy Chinese New Year everyone! Farewell Rooster and welcome the year of the Dog.

It was nice to get everyone together again even for a short time. John and Sheena came down from Toowoomba on Saturday and James and Dora flew up from Sydney on Friday so that we could all spend the eve together. Barbara didn't have to travel very far to join mum and Alison at our place.

Mum has been making good use of the local asian stores to buy bits and pieces to add a touch of authenticity to our celebrations this year. If it were up to Alison and myself we'd just head off into China town for a quick nibble of something soaked in sweet and sour sauce to avoid all the prep work. Luckily for us mum was feeling inspired so we just helped where we could to get things ready and tried not to get in the way.

A few tid bits that we put out to snack on before dinner. Dried red dates, longans, pistachios, fortune cookies and sweets. It's amazing how every single bit of food included in the meal has a special significance to it. Something I should know really but hasn't quite sunk in. Maybe I could get a book on it somewhere...



Mum planned to prepared five dishes which turned into seven for starters before serving the steamboat. Here in the picture we have chicken covered in prawns, pickled jelly fish, fried dumplings, pork spare ribs, pickled veg and five spice meat rolls.



I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the food when people were sitting down *glares at Alison* so I didn't take any pictures of the actual steamboat. I did however manage to quickly snap a shot of the mushrooms before Dora and I devoured them.



Sheena brought some lychees and Barbara made some sweets for our dessert. By this point we we're struggling and passed on about three containers of meat that we failed to finish. At least we'll have lots of left overs for the next few days. :)



Glad that we all managed to squeeze around the table without too much discomfort. Everyone wore bits of red for good luck so let's hope that this year will be even better than the last.

Choo choo... huh?

Well, finally managed to pick up those boardgames I ordered at the start of the month. I was getting pretty peeved that the delivery was taking so long to arrive and ended up calling the store in Sydney to check up on what was taking so long. Got given the run around for about three days but in the end it turned out that the courier made an attempted delivery on the 6th of January but must have forgotten to leave a note in our mailbox (ARGH!!!). All's good now though... well almost anyway.

I noticed something odd when I was punching out cardboard templates for Railroad Tycoon. The pack containing all the train markers seemed to have way too many blue counters in it. Sure enough, a quick check in the rulebook confirmed that the clumsy monkeys in the packaging factory sent me two sets of blue trains and left out a set of green ones.



Of course I could just be colour blind so feel free to drop me the line if any of you spot some green in that pack. Anyway, I've fired off yet another email at the store to see if they can arrange for a replacement. Hopefully they won't need me to send the box back as we've already played a game (Good fun!).

Ah well... I guess we could always buy a pot of green paint or something...

Home again

Well mum's finally come home after what must have been a pretty long and grueling trip across the country. She's taken an absolute bucket load of pictures which we'll have to go through shortly but for now it's just nice to have her back. Hopefully she won't get too relaxed though as we have a big Chinese New Year dinner to plan in a couple of weeks. Aparently some chinese bloke on the train told mum that it will be extra lucky this year if you dress in red from the eve (28th I believe) to new year day. Can't pass up a chance for good luck now can you.

Other bit of excitement is that I've asked Albert to place an order for one of the new MacBook PROs. A stock 1.83 Ghz model with the HDD upgraded to 100GB 7200RPM. Hopefully I'll see it sometime in late February when Apple release them. Till then I'll just have to scour the websites for tips on how to get Windows installed on those Intel babies. :P

Edit: It's been brought to my attention that CNY eve falls on the 28th of January this year, not the 27th. ^_^;

One Ring

We thought we would share this for those who are far away and may not see us for a while.

They've arrived...

Oh... my... god... I want this now.

*attempts to jumpstart flailing bank account*

Sewage, sand castles and she said "yes"

There was a ferocious gale blowing and signs of an approaching storm when we arrived at Golden Beach on Friday. Flashes of lightning continued through the night and we lost power in the room twice. By the next morning everything seemed to have calmed down so we decided to make full use of our stay there and shuffle down to the beach with our bucket and spade to build a fort.

I think I was the first to comment that something smelt pretty funky as we walked along the water. It wasn't until we placed our beach towels and started filling our second bucket of sand for a turret that a cameraman from Seven News came up to us to ask us if we knew that the storm last night caused sewage to spill right onto the water. Alison did a remarkable job of playing it cool and gave him a short interview on what we thought. They even used the footage on the six o'clock news so my baby was on TV. :)

Not ones to quit easily, we got in the car and drove up to King's Beach to restart our feat of engineering. At least here there were people swimming in the water and the place smelt of the sea and not so much of poo. After much sand digging and moulding we finally got something that looked like a fat pancake but could pass for a castle if you squinted hard enough. We then adorned the walls with ducks, fish and a crumbling octopus before declaring our satisfaction. Just to be difficult I insisted that we signed our masterpiece in the sand for a photo. Al scribbled her name lazily with a toe but I had other plans.



In case you can't decipher my distinctive penmanship, that's a short question scratched in the sand there. One that usually results in the lady averting her eyes uncomfortably before severing all social contact or far more preferably, simply saying "Yes". I'm glad to report that in this case it was the latter.

Let us in!

Argh, we've been living at this apartment in Indooroopilly for a year and a half without locking ourselves out but it finally happened. Alison and I just looked at each other when we reached the front door before frantically patting all our pockets in a futile act of desperation. After we exhausted all possibility of finding the keys we buzzed the couple who rent the flat above us.

Our neighbours Dan and Aimee were really helpful and even asked a friend to drive down to attempt to pick our lock. Sad to say he wasn't successful so we resorted to paying after hours fees for a locksmith to come out. $140 bucks later and we're back in doors and have hopefully learned a valuable lesson. DON'T FORGET YOUR KEYS!

On the road again and ludo mania

Drove to and from work for the first time today. Didn't cause any major accidents but that could have been due to the post-holiday light traffic. Though I miss the train ride to work I certainly didn't mind skipping the stinking hot death march from the station. Might continue to drive in while the weather is being uncooperative as Alison doesn't mind taking the train to the hospital. She actually has a shorter walk from the Dutton Park stop than from where she usually parks her car on the street.

We cracked out a few boardgames to play over the weekend which has pulled me firmly back into that craze once more. Ordered two games online yesterday, Railroad Tycoon and Gloom. They will probably arrive next week but if I'm really lucky then the postman might come a knockin' on Friday so we can bring them up to the beach with us. I've also started a geek list of my vast collection for anyone bored (heheh get it?) enough to take a look.

Happy New Year!

First post of 2006! No morning hangovers to usher in the new year but we did need a good long sleep in after a late night with friends. Kath and Andrew came over yesterday to celebrate the end of 2005 by eating lots of steamboat. Mum's already on her train trip so Als and I had to prepare everything ourselves for the first time.

We made a heap of won tons by hand which was a lot easier than it sounds. The pastry took a while to defrost and wasn't particularly maleable but with some twisting and pinching we managed to get them looking edible. Not here of course as they're not cooked yet.



The stock turned out a lot better than we could have hoped for largely due we believe to the prawn heads we chucked in for flavour. In this crazy looking caulron we added pork balls, chicken, prawns, enoki mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, ong choy, egg tofu and vermicelli.



Today I finally managed to persuade Alison to go watch the latest Potter movie. Must say that I'm a trifle dissapointed with the script that seemed to grab at random scenes from the book and the start-stop pacing of the show. Surprising really considering that how much we both enjoyed the Prisoner of Azkaban which was directed and written by the same team. I've always thought that the fourth book was the most cinematic of the series and ripe for the theatre so this was a wasted opportunity in my eyes.

Update on mum's progress across the country. She's just pulling into Adelaide station at the moment and is experiencing some wet weather. Hopefully she won't encounter any delays as she's scheduled to join a tour which takes her all the way up to Alice Springs and arrives there on the 4th.