Jolly Christmas, Golf and Ubuntu

Phew, another belt breaking Christmas at John and Sheena's due to an incessant deluge of tasty treats. Not that I'm complaining of course, though I must admit I'm a little concerned that my svelte figure might not survive both this feast as well as the upcoming scoff fest when we return to Malaysia in February. Guess I'd better dust off those jogging shoes.



Dora picked up a nice set of golf clubs for Christmas from James this year to compliment her rising commitment to the sport. Seems like this could be a family wide initiative as Alison and I ventured out to Oxley Driving Range, inspired by a few brief lessons from John. A few thousand more swings and I reckon we might be game enough to tackle a course.



I would have probably written this post a lot sooner but I've been busy installing and configuring Ubuntu on my laptop. I tried to install Ubuntu on my desktop over a year ago and failed miserably but so far I've been impressed with the latest version of the distro (7.10 Gutsy Gibbon).



Bits that impressed me:

• Live CD installation (being able to use an OS while installing it is definitely an odd experience)
• Great package manager which makes it so easy to install new applications
• Great FREE applications which I might consider gushing about in a future post
• Still able to play World of Warcraft through Wine
• New Compiz windowing system which rivals OSX and Vista in eyecandy
• Did I mention it's all free?

I won't lie, I've had my share of issues setting it all up and I still have a few niggling issues (Bluetooth radio, Sony Memory Stick isn't recognised). Overall though this has been the most promising experience I've had with Linux so far. I've had Linux distributions installed (Mandrake, Debian and Redhat) over the years but always ended up uninstalling them eventually under the weight of incompatibility. It's still early days yet but I think this one just might stick.

Seasons greetings

Having a lovely old time up in Toowoomba with Alison and the family. Just thought I'd scribble a quick blog posting to wish everyone a very merry Christmas this year. The food once again looks absolutely scrumptious and I hope to post a few pics up when we return to Brisbane later on in the week.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Brisbane Guide

Yay! I've had the good fortune of having one of my photos included in an online Brisbane guide. It's for an article on Chinese New Year and you can see it here. It's of a snapshot of Alison's red layer cake that we made for CNY this year.



Not really the best photo in my opinion but what the hey. No I won't be rolling in royalties from this sadly.

Looking for buried treasure

Eager to make use of our most recent purchase, I convinced Alison to come along for a quick walk to try our hand at Geocaching. I selected a simple multicache near our place so we wouldn't have to drive anywhere and with clues and GPS in hand we set off on our adventure.

For those too lazy to click on the link here are the clues we had to follow to find the cache. The whole idea is you get to each point and figure out the next GPS coordinates to walk to based on the answer to the question.

At the coordinates listed above you will find a sign explaining the history of the area and of Moolabin Creek. You will find these signs along the way and they provide a great insight into what was here before the houses arrived.

1 - In order to find waypoint 2 you need to know:
How high is Mt Cootha? = AAB
How high is Toohey Mt? = CAB
Waypoint 2 = S27 31.(A+B)AC and E153 01.B(B-C)(A+B+C+1)

2 - How many metres can the squirrel glider glide up to? = BD
Waypoint 3 = S27 31.(A+B+C)DC and E153 01.(B+C)BB

3 - How many trees on your left along the pathway are there? Starting at the coordinates and ending just before the yellow barriers = E
Waypoint 4 = S27 31.EA(E-B) and E153 01.(E-C)(B-C)C

4 - How many stations are there? (go on give them a go .....) FG = answer multiplied by 3
Waypoint 5 = S27 F1.EGE and E153 DC.(G+A)(G+C)G

5 - What does "Moolabin" mean in the local Aboriginal language? H = number of letters in the answer.
Waypoint 6 = S27 FA.DFD and E153 01.(H+C)FG

6 - How many million years ago does the geological formation date from? XXX-YYY
The cache can be found at: S27 FA.(XXX-229) and E153 DC.(YYY+699)

We found the first park easily enough and followed the clues quickly from point to point while checking out the local houses for sale. As Alsie pointed out I think this would be a great way to check out suburbs we'd like to move to in the future. The only clue we briefly stumbled on was number 3 as we were looking for an information plaque.

Arriving at the final coordinates we had some trouble actually finding the cache as there was fresh and damp mulch all over the area. A little persistence on my part (call it plain stubbornness if you will) and I eventually found a little red lunchbox partially buried at the base of a tree.



We signed the logbook and checked off our very first cache find. Hopefully the first of many.

Now to find Carmen Sandiego

Over the past few years my embarrassing lack of geographic knowledge and awareness has been the cause of much disappointment and aggravation in our household. Coupled with my inability to identify the business end of a road map and you have prime ingredients for a navigational nightmare. This is especially true when I don't have my loving and somewhat patient wife to pass driving duties to so I'm desperately in need of assistance.

In the interest of saving money for Christmas, Alison offered to buy me half a GPS as my present. With the same spirit of frugality in mind I decided to purchase the remaining half as her gift. I'm so thoughtful.

We picked up a Garmin Nuvi 250 at our local GPS store and have been fiddling with it for most of the day. Initial tests have proven promising thus far and the unit seems more than up to the task of directing even the most oblivious of drivers (moi). I'm particularly impressed with how it quickly recalculates the route when I miss three turns in a row. ^_^;

I'm also keen on dabbling in Geocaching even if the salesperson didn't think it would be the best model for the job. Sounds like a heap of fun.

Death in the family

I think we probably had a feeling this was going to happen for some time. One of our fish has slipped off to the Deep Blue this morning which drops our aquatic population to four. It's a sad day and a short memorial service was held this morning before burying Mr Sashimi among the parsley. He shall be sorely missed.



He's the orange one hiding at the back. We shall make a concerted effort to ensure that the others do not follow suit.

So this is what Hell feels like

I was planning on taking a break from World of Warcraft to try something else in the PC-RPG genre for a change so for the past few weeks I'd been following the release of Hellgate: London with much interest. The game seemed to have all the elements for a fun dungeon romp; an experienced and successful team that gave us the original Diablo, a cliche but workable premise of a demonic apocalypse set in the future as an excuse to provide both magic sword wieldy characters and gun toting hard asses, and of course the promise of much multiplayer action with a blend of FPS twitch play and RPG loot hoarding.

Watching the following trailer had me salivating at the thought of roaming the randomised streets of London burning, slashing and shooting the waves of hell spawn.



Sadly, a pretty trailer does not a good game make.

Thankfully I didn't have any of the problems registering for my account that seemed to be plaguing others. I rolled up an Engineer and entered a zombie infested side street. Flicking through the menus immediately highlighted a few dubious design decisions. The skill tree seemed oddly bland, the chat window toggled between obtrusive or invisible with nothing in between, and a quest text window which had a 20 word limit and forced you to click through each abbreviated page while the undead chewed on your extremities.

The winning menu for flawed implementation in my opinion however has to be the inventory screen and it's probably just my anal-retentiveness coming to the surface here. I've gotten used to having each item take up single slots regardless of their 'size'. It's not like having a gun take up 3x2 slots in your bag is any more realistic than a stack of twenty zombie hearts which take up one slot. Fine, I can still deal with bigger items. What I can't understand is why they didn't include the SORT button they had in Diablo 2 ten years ago. Playing inventory Tetris in my bags just so I can pick up one more rune inscribed sword I want to sell back in town does not sound like a feature I'd expect to see in a 2007 game.

Killing a few zombies and soldiering on I was soon treated a soporific story line presented in tear inducing disjointedness thanks to the aforementioned quest menu. It's a crying shame too as the basic storyline seemed to have some potential. To make matters worse, any narrative satisfaction you might glean from the main quest line is immediately squashed by the banality of the side quests. In fact, completing side quests often feels like an exercise in serendipitous slaughter as they fall unapologetically into the tried and true categories of "Kill X monsters", "Kill monsters for X items" and "Press X glowy things while you're out there killing monsters". Given that you're more than likely going to be shooting/slashing/burning everything in sight when out in the wild in the interest of self preservation, completing these goals is often unintentional and devoid of any sense of accomplishment.

That said, the combat engine itself is actually the game's saving grace. Killing monsters is undeniably fun which it should be and configuring your weapons, armour and skills to test your setup out on the mobs gives you a glimpse of what the game could have been like. The formula definitely works but once again fails prey to sub-par execution. The Engineer I rolled makes use of drones and bots for assistance, but the game offers no control over them. Entering a room results in the activation of every mob as your drone wanders off and unabashedly shoots at anything it feels like. The graphics engine while pretty in most cases also has lackluster presentation with some skills. Shoddy particle effects on leveling up, ugly HUD like skills used to mark mobs and a myriad of clipping issues result in an experience that sometimes feels like you're just playing a well developed MOD for Half Life.

The lure of multiplayer combat has not been especially strong either. A crappy chat window aside, there's no means to look for other players on the same quests. Not that you really need to as the game scales all the randomised levels to the number of players. Since all the levels are instanced there's no chance of meeting another player while prowling the streets. Chat bubbles over player heads are also missing so visiting Stations/Towns (which are also instanced) feels far from the social hubs they're supposed to be. While you can see other players walking around town there's little to suggest what they're doing unless you have the chat window obscuring half your screen and compare the floating names against what people are saying. I certainly can't see myself teaming up with anyone in the game that I don't already know in real life which is a shame as I've made lots of friends playing other MMORPGs like WoW and Guildwars.

To top it all off I've had about five system crashes in the past two days. The last of which was the proverbial straw on what had been a lame camel to begin with. I haven't uninstalled the game yet and still hope that Flagship Studios can salvage what must have been a labour of love.

It's back to WoW for PC gaming for me. Aside from that Alsie and I are both really enjoying Zack and Wiki on the Wii and look forward to the impending release of Guitar Hero 3 this week. Rock on!

48 months later

Hard to believe that it's been exactly four years since Alison and I decided to give it a "go". If I were the sort of person that resorted to nauseating cliche I'd profess that it seemed just like yesterday when Alison and I took our first tentative steps together on what we secretly hoped would be a life long journey of love and adventure.

Thankfully I'm not quite that sappy so I'll just list off a succinct highlight reel (in no particular order)

• Sharim crashing into Alison's life
• Alison graduating
• Sharim becomes an Australian Driver
• Alison's first visit to Malaysia
• 24 months together
• Sharim popping the question
• Alison and Sharim buy their first home
  
• Sharim finally becomes a real Chua
• 36 months together
• Alison and Sharim tie the knot
  

Well alright, maybe not succinct.

This year we returned to the beach and took up residence at the Hillhaven Apartments on the edge of Burleigh Heads. I thought I put up a very brave face accompanying Alison to the surf given my well disclosed aversion to all things sandy and sea-ey. I don't understand what's to like about the beach in truth... I mean the sand gets EVERYWHERE! Argh!



We'd arrived a little too early and could not check in to our rooms so Alison and I broke out the travel Scrabble board. It turned out to be a short lived game as Alsie soon cowered before my lexical superiority. That's after she tried to get away with playing a bogus Bingo word ("SPRINGERS" incase anyone's interested).




The following day was mostly spent lying on the sand and soaking up the rays. Well... Alison was at least. I had to nurse my sensitive complexion by hiding underneath the dubious protection of a ten dollar beach umbrella we picked up at the IGA.



And there we have it, photographic evidence that I made minimum contact with the sand. You can almost detect the start of a snarl in the upper lip as I struggle against the compulsion to run back indoors in whooping hysteria. The things we do for people we love.

On Sunday evening we made our way to Oskars for a lovely dinner. John and Sheena had given me an Oskars voucher for my birthday this year so I've been looking forward to trying their food for quite a while. Glad to say we weren't disappointed. I was especially impressed with the pork steak with roasted pear and creamy spinach (yes I ordered pork at a seafood restaurant... it looked good... so what the hey). Alison was a little more traditional and went for the barramundi and cauliflower puree which was oh so tasty.



We had today off so we could take our time moseying back to Brisbane. Not before having a nice breakfast of course at Bluff Cafe. First time I've had their Louisiana omelet with Creole sauce and I can safely say it's not going to be the last.

Not the most action packed weekend for a big milestone but it was a lovely time to spend with each other. Here's to many more trips to come. *clink*

Not the face! Not the face!

Urgh, I tried to resist the peer pressure. I really did. Sad to say I've signed up for a Facebook account. Even though I can't really see the point when I already have this blog and Flickr to scribble inane musings and share pretentious photographs.

Criticism aside however, I'm really quite impressed with the whole design behind facebook. Web 2.0 technology and social networking fascinate me and it'll be interesting to see how many old friends come out of the wood work from this exercise. Only have five friends as I write this... just two more before I get to add Kevin Bacon. :)

Heya cuz!

I recall spending many childhood holidays flying down to Singapore to spend time with my cousins Alex and Erica. Sad to say, they hardly ever came up to Malaysia to visit so I rarely got the chance to reciprocate the hospitality they showed me for years on end. My chance to play host finally came on the weekend when we got to take Erica around Brisbane on the last leg of her stay in Australia.



First stop, Mount Coot-tha. Gave her a nice view of the city and the surrounding mountains. There were a few tour groups milling around the summit when we got there so we didn't stay too long.

Next point was South Bank. It's a shame that the man made beach was under maintenance and looked rather sad at the time. The girls instead had to occupy themselves by browsing the market for craft and clothing.



After a nice Lebanese lunch we introduced Erica to Cold Rock ice-cream. I think she liked it, assuming that rapidly ingested cup of Peppermint ice-cream with chocolate fudge brownie and freckles is anything to go by.

We then grabbed the Citycat down to Riverside and walked through the city back to Southbank. A flying visit past to show Erica our unit, also to instruct her on the proper way to enjoy Vegemite, and we had to send her back to her Aunt's house.

Unfortunate that this trip was so short but we're looking forward to seeing her again the next time she's down under. Oddly enough, Cousin Alex might be the next guest if we can catch up with him when he flies over in November. Hooray!

Sydney rendezvous

We're back! Alison's been down in Sydney since Tuesday for work and I joined her on Thursday for an extended weekend of retail and gastronomic indulgence.

We stayed at the Travelodge just around the corner from Martin Place so the weekend of excitement got off to a quick start when I spotted Kochie talking to some people outside the 7 building. Alright maybe not that exciting but when you're from Brissie any celebrity sighting is better than nothing. I had my eyes peeled to see if I could spot Tori Amos as she was the studio that morning promoting her new tour but alas she was no where in sight.

Our first stop on the Friday of fun was the Pyrmont Fish Market. To my delight, we actually managed to get some sea urchin roe this time unlike our last visit. Oh happy days!

• Box of Sea Urchin - $10.50
• Steamed Rice - $2.50
• Pack of Seaweed - $3.00
• Total - Who cares, it's bloody delicious!

Seriously though, it's fantastic value considering two pieces of uni makesushi would probably be about $8.00 in a restaurant. I've put together step by step instructions for how to enjoy uni gohan if anyone's interested. Uncle Kheng would be so proud of me. Pure bliss.



We swung by to get some sweet bread (another necessity when in Sydney) for dessert before getting to the market. I might have pushed even my digestive system with this choice. It's called the "Perfect Roll"; a suspicious combination of chocolate, banana, cheese and bread. Savory and sweet at the same time with crunchy chocolate and gooey banana to round up the texture. Certainly interesting.



After gorging ourselves on fresh sushi Alison and I waddled down to Bondi Junction to find this little import store that I'd heard about. Aunty Lucy was kind enough to smuggle an overstuffed box of English crisps and confectionery when the family came over for the wedding. As my taste for all great snacks had been rekindled, I decided to find a local source for the yum-yums. A Taste of Home seemed to be just the shop.



Tried not to go too crazy in the store. Only bought about 20 bucks worth of crisps and the first can of Lilt I've had in about ten years. I'm going to have to try to make these ones last a little longer.



Took a break from shopping after that to meet up with Mary and Robin and see their lovely new home. Can't believe how much property costs in Sydney. Actually makes Brisbane look reasonable by comparison.

As we were in Sydney I figured I'd need to check out my favourite games shop in person. It was a good thing I had enough money in my "spending" account to get most of the things I wanted. Lots of Battlelore stuff of course.



On Saturday we caught up with Donald and Corrin for dim sum in China town (yes, ate myself silly yet again). After that we headed over to spend some time with James and Dora to see the rest of their wedding/honeymoon photos. Sounds like they had the experience of a lifetime in Africa.

*sigh* Now to give our credit cards and stomachs a chance to cool off over the next few weeks.

Photos... just not of the Honeymoon

Surprise surprise, the photos from the NZ trip aren't quite finished yet. I did make an effort but there are still about 200 snaps that need to be augmented before they can withstand public scrutiny. I realise it's been a gajillion years since I've posted anything of interest so here are the professional wedding photos we got from Deazeley's.



Hope you enjoyed those. NZ photos to come... promise...

WoW, what great photos

I've been neglecting pretty much everything recently thanks to a recent time sink called World of Warcraft. It's almost scary how much of your day just flitters away after logging on "just for a little while". Thankfully Alison hasn't become quite a WoW Widow just yet but other activities have definitely been neglected.

Here's my dwarven warrior Ghrolm.



Spent a little bit of time working on the honeymoon photos but I still have about 300 or so to do so it might be a while. James and Dora are back from what looks like a fantabulous trip to Africa. Thankfully they were a little more disciplined with their photo editing and have posted them here for all to enjoy.

Alright... aim is to finish NZ photos in the next week... after a little more WoW...

James and Dora Liley

Another family wedding that's come and gone. James and Dora must have had a tough time listening to us talk about our big day in the months leading up to it when they would have had their own occasion to plan just six weeks later. I guess we weren't quite that distracting in the end as they managed to arrange an absolutely fantastic day in Brisbane. All done from Sydney to boot!

The ceremony was held in Saint Andrews church in the city which looked truly majestic. It's a shame that we didn't have the camera on us for that as the organ was pretty darn impressive. Oh and the bride and groom looked stunning of course.



I didn't manage to get a full length shot of Alison and myself unfortunately. Shame as I looked up tutorials on youtube on how to tie my own bow tie which didn't look too shabby. Thankfully the official photographer is going to be sending out links to the photos so I'll put that up when they come through.

Food and speeches were excellent at the Polo Club where the reception was held. It was also nice to get a chance to catch up with James and Dora's friends to hear old stories about them.



It took less than two months but now both kids in the Liley household are happily married. I suppose the next step would be getting John and Sheena some grandkids...

Home sweet home

Short post to say that we're finally back home safe and sound in Brisbane. The flight back was a little bumpy and the bus trip from Queenstown to Christchurch was long but at least we got there in the end.



Can't tell you how happy we were to see that bus pull up in Queenstown. I think we'd have been royally stuffed if we had to try to cancel our flight and look for another plane to take us out of New Zealand in time.



Then we had to wake up at 3AM to catch our flight. Couple of bloodshot eyes at Christchurch Airport.

Now that we're home and somewhat settled it's a bit of a relief. Thanks to kind mums and dads for cleaning up the place and buying food for us to eat. Honeymoon pictures to follow once I get some rest and wade through all the photos.

We just lost the moon

Well our bus trip to Dunedin this morning turned out to be a fizzer. The road to Cromwell was closed once again due to icy conditions and things didn't seem likely to change today. We've therefore decided to scrap Dunedin off the trip and stay in Queenstown till Monday when we'll take a coach straight to Christchurch for our flight. The weather's a lot better today and all reports indicate that things will be clear by Monday. *fingers crossed*

The owner of the B&B we're staying in has been kind enough to give us a super low rate for the next couple of days so we won't have to find alternate accommodation thankfully. She even passed on a couple of DVDs for us to watch. I selected Peter Jackson's King Kong for our afternoon entertainment, geez that's three hours of my life that I'll never get back.

We're still having fun here in Queenstown and managed to pick up a pretty funky teapot in town for an NZ souvenir. Plan is to hang around town again tomorrow and maybe catch a movie at the cinema, my vote's for Pirates 3. We'll be pretty darn happy when we're back in Brisbane on Tuesday... hopefully.

Wedding Media

Stuck indoors with the cruddy weather outside so I figured I'd get moving on putting together the photos from the recent festivities. Haven't gotten around to writing captions yet but we plan to when we get a chance.

Tea Ceremony


Wedding


You can also browse the photos at a leisurely pace on our Picasa Web Album. Tea Ceremony available here and Wedding here.

Alison and I played a little photo montage after our speech at the wedding to say thank you to our beautiful parents. I've uploaded the file to youtube for a quick preview. I'd like to host the original AVI as well but Google Pages isn't being particularly cooperative at the moment.



Photos from the honeymoon will probably take a lot longer to get ready. I've already taken close to 1500 snaps of which hopefully a quarter will be salvageable. Lots of photoshop work lies ahead for me. :P

Derf's demise

I guess things were going too smoothly. We were having a nice day out driving to Glenorchy when a snow storm suddenly hit us with a vengeance. Since we were over half way out of Queenstown we figured it'd be best to try to make it on to our destination rather than turning around. The roads looked a little white but I'd figured that snow chains weren't needed yet. Oh the benefit of hindsight.

Coming down a slope our trusty Corolla lost traction and the brakes locked up. I did all I could and managed to turn the car away from the side wall but still ended up smacking into a road sign and the guard rails. We were pretty shaken even though it was really a rather slow crash. Thankfully someone came along the road in a four wheel drive and escorted us to Glenorchy. The frustrating thing was we were just 2 minutes out of town.



Sad to say we had to say goodbye to Derf at Glenorchy. We certainly weren't game to try getting back on our own and all the locals didn't recommend trying the roads without a four wheel drive, snow chains and nerves of steel. After calling around insurance companies and rental agencies we caught a lift back into Queenstown with some nice staff from Dart River Safari.

The weather report suggests that the snow is going to continue for the next three days at least. Assuming things lift we'll probably get a coach to Dunedin and then on to Christchurch. Right now all the roads are closed out of Queenstown until the snow plows come out.

It's a horrible feeling, especially when we were having such a good time. Looks like tomorrow's going to involve talking to the police and rental car people rather than seeing the local sights but at least we're alive and well. There were apparently over 50 accidents in the area due to the storm including the death of one girl when her van drove off into lake Wanaka. Could be a lot worse.

Kiss my arse!

We've made it to Queenstown and loving the accommodation here. Alsie's definitely done a good job selecting a B&B for us to stay over the next four days. Food is great as usual but the temperature this far south isn't exactly warming. Thankfully there are heaps of pubs with roaring fires to keep us nice and toasty.

Speaking of pubs, I thought I'd share this with the lads from Operation Bullfrog. I realise the proper spelling is Pog Mo Thoin but what the hey.

Greetings from New Zealand!

Ah! At long last I finally have internet access again! Not exactly free but certainly reasonable compared to what we've seen elsewhere.

I'm posting live from Te Anau, a lovely little town which will be our home fro the next two days. Our trip so far has been absolutely terrific. The weather has ranged from a little chilly to "Oh my god my snot has turned to ice!" freezing. Very happy we were loaded up with lots of warm clothing courtesy of John and Sheena prior to our departure.



Here's Derf, our ever faithful companion that has taken us all the way from Christchurch across the west coast. She's been a fun drive so far and has handled everything we've thrown at her. Can't believe how clean and shiny she was when we picked her up. Post journey photo of the car to follow when we return to Brisbane.

Anyways, we've seen a fair bit in the week we've been here so far. Lots of mountains, plains and sea which of course means that I've been taking a heap of photos. Seriously, with country side this beautiful the only way you'd be able to take a bad picture is if you had the lens cap on. Will have to wait till we get back to Brissie before I start sharing the holiday snaps though as I'm not sure how much bandwidth this motel connection will provide.

The trip so far has seen us stopping in at Hokitika, Franz Josef, Wanaka and now Te Anau. The highlight of the trip so far would definitely have to be walking on Franz Josef glacier. A little physically demanding but we were glad that we managed to complete an activity that required "average physical fitness".



Tomorrow we'll be taking the bus to Milford Sound which should present more photo opportunities I'd hope. Then Derf will be taking us to Queenstown for a few days of relaxation before embarking on the last leg of our trip to Dunedin and back to Christchurch. Driving around has been tricky at times with both of us in the car but thankfully the newly weds haven't resorted to grevious bodily harm when resolving disagreements.

On that note, I guess I'd better stop blogging before Alison reaches for the cutlery drawer...

Here comes the bride

The moment we’ve been waiting for has finally arrived. The Malaysian mob caught two cabs to the church at a quarter past two just so we could be sure everyone would get a good seat. Cel did his best to keep me calm during what I perceived as the point of no return. Between Pastor Jessup and my old bud I think I just about managed to stave off fainting in the vestry.
We were soon led out to be gawked at by the guests who I swear were hanging from the rafters. Thankfully I didn’t have to sweat under all the staring and pointing for long as Don started to play the processional and Alison’s bridesmaid Mary began to walk down the aisle. Of course soon after that all eyes, mine included, turned to Alsie who looked wonderful. This was the first time I’d seen the dress and I certainly wasn’t disappointed.



James, Kath and Andrew read beautifully and it was really special having them do that for us. Somehow I managed to mumble my way through the vows without getting too tongue tied and before I knew it we both had rings on our fingers and were signing the registry.



With the legal bits complete we were officially introduced as Mr and Mrs Chua and left the church in matrimonial grace. At least that would have been the case if I didn’t keep tripping up on Alison’s dress on the way out. Good thing no one was video taping that bit… I hope…



Trust us to pick one of the coldest days in Toowoomba to have a wedding. I believe the bureau of meteorology had ambient temperature at 10 degrees Celsius but the wind chill certainly made it feel a lot colder than that. Thankfully the photos don’t really show how uncomfortable it was to stand still and be snapped. Our faces were frozen in position so smiling became pretty simple.

We were whisked away to have an obscene number of photos taken throughout the Empire Theatre and by the end of it I was ready to chuck a fit. I can definitely say without a doubt which side of the lens I’d rather be on. The venue was absolutely stunning though and they even let us into the theatre itself.



Once we were allowed to leave the photographers we mingled for a bit and got a chance to talk to all the guests who had come from so far away to share this special day with us. I was rather glad that my pseudo-Sherwani turned out to be a hit. Hopefully I might have started a new fashion movement in Toowoomba.

Dinner itself was held in what used to be the old Wesley church which is attached to the Empire Theatre. The Empire staff worked wonders with the hall with lighting and decorations. I know I had to catch my breath when I entered the hall for the first time. The Chinese characters on the wall are the symbols for Double Happiness in case anyone’s interested.



Our small contribution to the décor came in the form of 1000 paper cranes that Alison and I meticulously folded before the wedding. The majority of these were hung from twisted willow centerpieces with any leftovers used as scatters along the tables. I think all the effort was worthwhile in the end and pretty much everyone we’d talked to took some home to remember the night.



The rest of the night continued with a lovely dinner, touching speeches from the family and a little bit of dancing. It’s a good thing that I managed to avoid stepping on Alsie’s dress while all eyes were on us.



Dessert was rounded up with a super yummy cake baked by my new mother-in-law Sheena and decorated by Alison’s Aunty Fiona. The cute little top pieces were found by Als on our recent trip to Hong Kong. While it’s kinda hard to see in the photo, the girl actually has reddish blonde hair so Alison thought this was rather appropriate for a kwailo (Caucasian) – Chinese couple. :)



I can’t believe how much fun we’d had on the night. It’s really touching how everyone that came were fully willing to enjoy themselves and really get into the festivities. I don’t think I’ll see another Australian wedding where everyone screamed “Yaaaaaaaaam Seng!” (Cheers) for a while. Even the dance floor turned into a mosh pit when what seemed like the whole room got up to have a jig or two. Thank you for making the evening truly magical.

All good things must come to an end though. I’ve been told on many occasions that the wedding just zips by you if you blink but never could I have imagined how fast the night past us by. We’re usually the first ones to retire for the night but this time we managed to last the whole stretch. The new married couple then gratefully accepted a ride back to their accommodation in John and Sheena’s car. Never too old to rely on mum and dad I say.

John put together a scrumptious brunch the next day for everyone to sit down and go over the night. This would be the last time I’d see all the family that flew out for the wedding so it was a rather bittersweet event. I’m glad that everyone had a great time and hope that those continuing on to see more of Australia will enjoy what this country has to offer.



I guess this is just the start of things. Not nearly enough time to post all the photos I’d like to before we have to get to the airport for our flight. Promise to put more up on Flickr or some other site when we have a moment. Next adventure for Mr and Mrs Chua will be touring the South Island of New Zealand for the next three weeks. More blog postings of our travels to follow if Internet access and time permit.

Tea Ceremony

Hard to believe that after months of discussing the tea ceremony it’s finally over with. Lucy, Mak Long, Dominic and Paul flew into Brisbane on Thursday morning and hit the ground running with preparation for the festivities. I don’t believe the cooking stopped until I picked Wing and the girls up from the airport that evening. Even after this all day slog they still had to wake up early the next morning to get things ready for the Bride to arrive at nine.



The food had to be blessed and offered to the ancestors first of course. This has to be done outside and was primarily for grandma and granddad who are no longer with us. I’m sure that they would have enjoyed the feast it’s a shame they never got a chance to meet Alison in person.



Alison and her folks were supposed to meet me up the road so that we could come down together but the traffic from Toowoomba must have been a little better than expected. As things weren’t quite ready yet we decided to head out for a quick drink at McDonalds before making our entrance. Our outfits probably raised a few eyebrows at this point.



Traditionally the groom is supposed to travel to the Bride’s house to escort her to his home, normally a fair distance away. On approaching the groom’s house the party is supposed to make as much noise as possible to signal their arrival which should then be answered with fireworks and crackers. As with most Chinese customs this is supposed to drive the evil spirits away from the area. In our case this was represented by a Mazda car horn and firecrackers of the electronic variety. Not exactly authentic but certainly enough to scare away spirits and annoy a few neighbours.





A brother of the groom is then supposed to approach the car and open the door for the Bride to emerge, but only if the Bride offers an adequate bribe. My cousin Paul must have been happy with his Ang Pow, a red packet containing money, as we were soon allowed to descend and enter the house.





We were then greeted by the family and brought over to pray to the deities and ancestors. This symbolized an announcement of our intent to marry each other and to introduce Alison all the Chua ancestors so that she could be acknowledged as one of the family.





After the ancestors had been informed of a new family member we then prepared to offer tea to our parents and relatives so that they too would accept Alison and me into the family as husband and wife. This involved serving a sweet tea brewed from dried red dates and longan in a special tea set to each family member in turn.



The relatives would then drink the tea to display their approval of the match and express their happiness by presenting us with Ang Pow or gifts of gold. Alison received a wonderful array of rings, pendants and earrings that day from my mum and aunts while I got a beautiful gold and onyx ring with a hammer-set solitaire.



I also served tea to John and Sheena and it was wonderful that they could come to take part of this special day with us. Everyone had a great time and it was a really nice bit of tradition to follow.



After all that the ceremony was over and we had taken our first step towards becoming man and wife. Oh and the feeding frenzy could start of course. :)