Let it snow!

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/snow-at-mt-lofty-more-wild-weather-coming/story-e6frea83-1226493307107
It snowed at Mt. Lofty,  albeit only around 50mm on the ground BUT STILL it snowed!! In spring! The whole of Adelaide is excited and it’s like Christmas is here.  Wish I could take the day off to play.  It should've snowed when we went there for our hike last Saturday.  Great hike but our endurance was so bad, we had to stop every few minutes during the walk up, which was embarrassing considering  there were people with pom poms along the trail cheering everyone on.  Hmm..I still havnt found out what that’s all about. 

The trail we took was the Waterfall Gully to Mount Lofty Hike

We hiked through a stretch of bushfire re-growth nearer towards the peak and the trees there are still charred from a bushfire back in 1983.  I just had to stop and wonder at the surprising beauty of it all.  The whole place smells of roasted potatoes, sun’s out and the day was perfect.  It couldn’t have been more obvious that spring is here.  The hike down was so much easier without any stop.  Took us nearly 3 hours to and fro but it’s been fun. 

This week, rain started to pour and it’s been hailing on and off.  Everything has been so disjointed.  What with daylight saving (a waste of my precious hour) and hailing at night, I havn’t been able to catch much sleep.  Been digging out my summer clothes but I guess it’s still too early for that.  =(  It's a love-hate affair with this crazy weather.  I'd forgive the inconvenience if only it'd snow all over Adelaide.   Enough for us to throw snow balls and build a snow man with. =p

Jetty incident

Dad has a formidable temper.  I remember our childhood speckled with memories of being disciplined with ‘specially made’ canes.   Dad would get some cane suitable for hitting naughty kids from furniture shop owners.  I remember tagging along once and he said to me “See this? This is for when you don’t listen to me” and bent the cane to test for flexibility and swung it around to test for durability while I stood there watching *sweat*.  I remember as well being chased around the house with said cane and locking myself in a room only to find dad climbing through the windows…by then it’s game over.  I also remember doing something bad and the first thing I did before dad got home was to find the cane and throw it behind the cupboard.  I was right, what I did was bad enough for the cane to make an appearance, but since dad couldn’t find it (to my initial relief), he ended up using one of his leather belt (to my horror).  I think I end up pretty normal though.  I guess it’s just the way kids are disciplined back then.  Kids now are so over protected and pampered.

Anyway, the reason why I wrote all that was to explain how scary dad was.  Dad is so much more mellow now and obviously, the cane has retired.  However, there are still times when his temper would explode and we would cringe in silence.  When he widens his eyes and flares his nostrils in anger, everyone would either 1)stare back in alarm trying to think if we are brave enough to be a smart ass or 2) try not to look, be silent and pretend that everything is going to be A-OK.  That was many years back though.  This then brings me to an incident as related to me by my brother.

There was a period when dad, who was a civil servant, had to work away from our hometown.  Mum would drop him at the jetty very early in the morning and he would catch a boat to another town for work.  Either mum or my brother would then pick him up again in the evening.  They were late in picking dad up from the jetty one day and dad called to tell them to move it.  After hurriedly dropping my sister off for her driving lesson, mum and brother proceeded to drive to the jetty.  Unfortunately, they chose that day to try a different route and ended up getting lost.  To make matters worse, my brother left his hand phone with my sister as she’d forgotten to bring hers, so there was no way to assauge the oncoming storm.

Arriving at the jetty, as soon as they saw dad’s dark face from the car, they decided to 2) try not to look, be silent and pretend that everything is going to be A-OK.  Dad was seriously pissed.  He opened the car door, threw his bag on the seat and slammed the door shut.  Without turning back, my brother proceeded to drive away.  Both mum and brother remained silent, hoping dad would cool down in time.  However, as he’d expected at least a barrage of reprimanding from dad about time keeping, my brother was getting really curious when MANY minutes have passed and still there was not a peep from dad.  Glancing surreptitiously at the rearview mirror, he was shocked to see that there’s no one at the back.  Thinking that his eyes were playing tricks on him, he turned around and looked properly.  Still, there’s no dad.  By then, his mind was furiously churning.  Was dad so angry that he opened the door and jumped out of the moving car?  He distinctively heard the door slam shut!  Brother turned to mum and said “Ma, pa’s not there” and mum immediately turned around.  They’re both stumped.  By then, they have almost reached my sister’s driving school and so decided to quickly pick her up and go back to the jetty.  When my sister got in the car, she had the hand phone plastered to her ear.  She whispered to my brother “What happened? Dad’s so angry! Here!” and passed the phone to my brother.  As soon as my brother said Hello, my dad proceeded to let loose a string of swear words.  This coming from a man who abhors crude language and had instilled enough fear in us to never breathe any in his presence.  (in his presence should be in bold..lol)

It transpired that after dad threw his bag in, he did not follow suit as he had to go to the washroom.  However, right after slamming the door shut but before he was able to indicate to them that he’s going to be right back, my brother had driven off without even a backward glance.  My dad ran after our car shouting, but to no avail.  He had been left stranded.  Ta dummmmmmm…..  In the end, too embarrassed to go back to where he was (everyone outside a café was watching), dad legged it until my brother found him.  Apparently he’d walked many miles.  When I asked what happened next and if everyone got a tongue lashing, my sister told me that dad was sheepish when he got into the car.  Cute.  He probably had time to cool down during the walk.  Lol.

Grandma, Wo Hen Tong Ku T^T

Nephew's sick...again.  He asked to webcam last Sunday which I happily obliged.  In spite of a fever and coughs, with a cooling patch stuck on his forehead, he was still very energetic and talked non stop about his Bakugan collection.  He loves them dearly.  Halfway talking, he kept rubbing between his eyes in very impatient movements.  I was baffled but even when I asked what is wrong, he kept on talking.  Da jie heard me and looking at the way he was rubbing, she guessed rightly that he had a headache.  She decided to end the video call so he can have a nap.  As she was leading him away, he kept turning around to wave and blow me kisses.  He even extended his head to make sure that I can see him while he was walking away *melts*

That night, they found ulcers in his mouth and suspected that he had contracted the hand, foot and mouth disease.  Went to the doctor's but was advised that it's not what they feared and was sent home with advise to monitor him further.  The very next day, with more ulcers and fever that would not abate, they went to another doctor and was informed that, true to their fears, it is indeed Coxsackie.  They suspected that he contracted the very infectious virus at nursery.  However, with so many babies with the virus already admitted to the hospital (I think there's an outbreak in Penang so to all parents there, take care!) , he was sent home with antibiotics.  I googled up coxsackie on the net and the images that came up look really painful.  My poor nephew.   I can only imagine how much pain he is in.  He told mum "Grandma, wo hen tong ku" <---"Grandma, I am suffering." T^T  He's started to form blisters on his body as of last night.  Was told that the whole process would take about a week.  My sister's joining a new company today and my heart goes out to her.  She must be under so much stress.  It's definitely tough being a parent.

p/s:  There's so many grey areas in medicine and high likelihood of misdiagnosis, so seek second opinions for sicknesses which are out of the ordinary.  One of my aunt was diagnosed with an illness and given a bunch of medication to take only to be told by another doctor down the track that she had been wrongly diagnosed.  My younger sister had to undergo a major operation which could've been avoided with correct diagnosis earlier.  Thus, moral of the day is...doctors are sometimes wrong so pray really hard and do your own research.

Cute messages

I received a message late last night from da jie, asking me if I am already in bed.  She told me that my nephew wanted to write to me via msn messenger.  Unfortunately, I’ve just switched off the light and hopped into bed, so decided to viber them instead.  While the phone was being passed to mum, I can hear my nephew speaking and singing in the background.  Mum informed me that he is typing a very long offline message to me.  He would occasionally interrupt my mum asking “How do you spell airplane? Or Grandma how to spell next?” and then he’d go on and sing the alphabet very loudly.  When I asked to speak to him, he said to me “Yi yi! I am now writing abc..can you see??” XD  Before I ended the call, da jie warned that I will be bombarded with offline messages when I next log in.

Lo and behold, as soon as my messenger is up and running in the office this morning, I received a string of cute messages from the little guy.

…@hotmail.com said (Yesterday at 11:02 PM):

*joel lim is coming  <---XD

*tv

…@hotmail.com said (Yesterday at 11:03 PM):

*12345678910

…@hotmail.com said (Yesterday at 11:04 PM):

*100

*90

*80

*70

*60

*50

*40

…@hotmail.com said (Yesterday at 11:05 PM):

*30

*20

*10

…@hotmail.com said (Yesterday at 11:06 PM):

*aeroplane <---Because I’ve always asked him to fly to me whenever I talk to him on the phone or via webcam

…@hotmail.com said (Yesterday at 11:09 PM):

*abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

…@hotmail.com said (Yesterday at 11:11 PM):

*nowissoundforabc  <-- Now I sound for abc???? LOL!

…@hotmail.com said (Yesterday at 11:12 PM):

*nexttime  <--- Next time

…@hotmail.com said (Yesterday at 11:13 PM):

*one  <--- Supposed to be ‘wont’.  Our bad.  We thought he wanted to spell the number.

…@hotmail.com said (Yesterday at 11:14 PM):

*yousing  <--- you sing

*with

…@hotmail.com said (Yesterday at 11:15 PM):

*me

*aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbcccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc  <--- hahaha, cant stop laughing at this..it’s like he’s really singing here

He stopped at m and went on to write a series of random letters and numbers.  Gosh, he’s so adorable. 

This has definitely made my day. ♥

We've Moved!

Yes, we’ve moved!  Am still at the stage where we fall into bed every night with the sound of our backs cracking from sheer exhaustion.  Up to date, we’ve unpacked only about 70% of our stuffs (despite working zealously every night after work) , bought and installed practically the whole of the upstairs furniture, carried things up and down the 2-storey home about a hundred times, and moved enough heavy furniture to make us stunted for the rest of our lives.  (yeah yeah..I know we’re way beyond help BUT STILL..one could always hope)  The muscles to our legs are still aching and I think I’ve sprained one of my foot.  Need.massage.desperately!  I’d like to think that all this is helping to keep my weight in check but the weighing scale in the bathroom showed how wrong I was last night.  I’ve even put on weight…a lot!..a lot of weight.  Dammit.  No wonder my face looks so fat lately.

Things hadn’t been going all that smoothly during our move.  Friday was the settlement date and had been a total nightmare.  We set out to work in the morning happily thinking that everything’s going so well.  Fast forward halfway to work and all hell broke loose.  Our bank agent called with an earth shattering news.  (Not going to go into detail here, suffice to say that it’s enough to give everyone a brain freeze) The rest of the morning was spent flying around the city between the banks and the conveyancer’s office.  I’ve hung up on our agent so many times that my brother has made a joke out of it  “Ahhh…can I call you back!” du du du du du….

I’ve also managed to piss my boss off by taking an emergency leave and have been feeling the pain throughout the week.  Sigh.  So many reprisals.  Started the day really early the next day doing last minute packing, aka chucking everything into black garbage bags.  Our motto is if you have to unpack, there’s no point using duct tapes.  My brother found a Chinese guy who can move some of our heavier furniture for $220 (he initially quoted $200 but complained halfway that we have more things to move than originally informed =p) which is a bargain considering the fact that to rent a 3 tonne truck alone would cost us $197.  Henry came to help with some of the moving even though we said not to and Julia made us a delicious lunch.  We really appreciate it guys.  <3

First night sleeping in the new house felt like staying in a hotel.  Everything’s different and new and smelling of fresh paint.  Reminded me of the home sickness I experienced when I first arrived in Australia as well.  Such a bittersweet feeling =) Sunday was spent furniture hunting.  We bought a wardrobe, bed and narrow table for my bedroom.  I have a vision of all white bed sets.  My sister bought a table and king sized mattress for her bedroom and Maggie had a bed and table for hers.  We got the Chinese removalist to come and transport the furniture for us again and when he arrived and saw all the furnitures, he said and I quote “ Whoa Cow! You already had so many things and you are buying more!”  Anyway, as we were rushing for time, my brother and I went back to the house in Mawson Lakes to try an attempt a preliminary clean up before the prospective tenants arrived.  Unfortunately, they arrived before us.  The first thing they commented when they entered the house was..”Where’s the furniture?” =__= News flash guys, if it’s furnished the rental would be a lot higher.  I bet that’s the last we’ll see of them.  After much consideration and comments of “Peggy, I don’t think you’re tough enough to be a landlord”, and unless I can find a strapping boyfriend who can kick butts before I sign the contract, I’ll be getting an agent to deal with the headache.  T^T  Bye bye dollar sign.  Meeting him this Saturday to start the process.

Night time was spent trying to put our furniture together.  My sister found out that the mattress doesn’t fit her bed even though one’s a king sized bed and the other’s a king sized mattress.  We should’ve gotten a measurement but thought that it’s all universal.  I also found out that wrong items had been selected for the wardrobe and we are missing a few vital elements.  Everyone said S*** the whole night and we went to bed exhausted but with the feeling that nothing much has been accomplished and more headache to resolve.

We’ve managed to return the mattress and wardrobe (the mirrored doors are super heavy!!!!) finally tonight and since we again, had to call out the Chinese guy to help with the transport (we’ll definitely become his most loyal customer of the year) we took the opportunity to buy a washing machine as well.  I’ll be getting a robe specialist to come in for a quote on Saturday.  If their website advertisement can be trusted, we’ll be able to have a full height wardrobe installed for almost the same price.  *sigh* Should’ve thought of this before and save us the pain.  All thanks to mum’s recommendation. 

So there you have it, our week of total torture, rash decisions and utter chaos.  We’ve put up our beds and things are slowly falling into place though.  Loving my room and the house to bits.  We have an invisible drummer neighbor who plays almost every night and made the place sounds so festive.  The bass is loud enough to be heard but not too loud as to be irritating.  I would sit in my sister’s walk-in robe to listen.  Took the bus for the first time yesterday and everything’s so exciting.  New faces and new routes.  It’s like moving to Australia all over again. =)  

Stand by Me

When the night has come

And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we'll see
No I won't be afraid, no I won't be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me

And darlin', darlin', stand by me, oh now now stand by me
Stand by me, stand by me

If the sky that we look upon
Should tumble and fall
And the mountains should crumble to the sea
I won't cry, I won't cry, no I won't shed a tear
Just as long as you stand, stand by me

And darlin', darlin', stand by me, oh stand by me
Stand by me, stand by me, stand by me-e, yeah

I’ve been obsessed with the song for a few days and have listened to many different versions and covers.  Here’s a list of my favorites that I grabbed off Youtube:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYtfMS1nlGU

I am putting this live acoustic version foremost as it’s the one that got me hooked.  Go John Park!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7P5jWu9JLo&feature=bf_next&list=PL182479E1FC3C3168

By the ever lovable Timon and Pumba (and the frogs of course!)

Pumba : Aaaaa…I don’t think I like this song….XD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSHiiWP_Xtc

Heard this on MyFM promoting the movie ‘First Time’.  Nothing special about the voice but the band’s cool.  By Mark Chao.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhw09nuhk0c&feature=bf_next&list=PL5B62319DEBD2FF9F

One of many remix of Beautiful Girl and Stand by Me.  Never realize how the melodies could be fairly similar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q28Nl4OrPk&feature=bf_next&list=PL182479E1FC3C3168

Julian Lennon & Roland Orzabal’s version.  I actually prefer theirs to John Lennon’s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZqSRTrAQtQ&feature=bf_next&list=PL5B62319DEBD2FF9F

By J-Co.  A modern take on the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R6kkZLkT-Q&feature=related

Acapella version by Rockapella

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjqre-8igAQ&feature=bf_next&list=PL5B62319DEBD2FF9F

Country version of the song by Tracy Chapman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA53T_DT4kk

And of course, the original by Ben E. King.  Ahhh…love the bass. =)

Which one is YOUR favorite? 

She went S-shaped!!

I got this from the manga 'Immortal Rain' by Ozaki Kaori.  The guy in the white lab coat sneaked up to the one in black garb and ran his finger down his back, making him go AAAAAhh! See how his back is curved into an S shape? I think it's so funny and a bulb kindda went off in my head. *evil laugh*

And so..I decided to experiment on my sis to see if she'd go S-shaped too.  Today, when her back was turned towards me, I acted immediately.  Unfortunately, in my eagerness, I pressed too hard.  She did go AAAAhhh! and went S-shaped but she turned and said "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?? THAT HURTS!" >__< and she was looking at me all confused.  I got shocked too since I thought she wont have felt the finger too much over her thick jacket.  But seeing her confused face and remembering how her reaction was EXACTLY like the guy in black garb, I had to laugh.  God I am so evil. 

Now you know why I did what I did, bi....  LOL!