39 Questions on 2008

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before?
Flew a helicopter. Watched the Melbourne NYE fireworks live in the city. A few work related things. A couple of things that I shall keep to myself.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Still haven't achieved the juggling. Admittedly haven't really tried for a couple of years. Resolutions for 2009? Take better care of myself.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
My cousins and one of my work friends.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Mum lost her battle with pancreatic cancer in December. My grandma (Mum's Mum) lost her battle with cervical cancer in November. Interesting to note there is not previous history of cancer on Mum's side of the family.

5. What countries did you visit?
Singapore.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
More travel.

7. What date from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
15th December - a day filled with coloured cranes and my nearest & dearest.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Saying no to work.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Unfinished projects largely knitting & crochet.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Not really. The had the flu, and an ear infection that's it.

11. What was the best thing you bought in 2008?
Three lego kits. A train, a crane and a forklift/car.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
My parents again but this time for their inspiring final 18 days & nights together. Anyone who can find romance in the face of death and in a hospital is truly amazing.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
I'd rather not say.

14. Did you go to any weddings?
No

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Mum being in remission at the start of the year. I said it was "great" when I got the call and then an hour later was crying on the tram home.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
Look Mummy, No Hands by Dillie Keane

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
---happier or sadder? same same
---thinner or heavier? thinner :(
---richer or poorer? same same

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Lived a little and travel

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
(over)think

20. How did you spend Christmas?
Eve was spent watching Carols By Candlelight with Matt. Day was spent with family.

21. Did you fall in love in 2008?
Perhaps

22. Were you rejected by anyone?
No?

23. What was your favorite TV program?
Mad Men for a new show. Got a little suckered into Grey's Anatomy & Private Practice too... oh and House

24. Do you dislike anyone now that you didn't dislike this time last year?
Yes.

25. What was the best book you read?
The Name of the Wind closely followed by The Widow Clicquot and possibly Growing Up Asian in Australia

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Death Cab For Cutie & Gotye

27. What did you want and get?
More time to get to know Mum. An iPhone & the most amazing wool from Germany.

28. What did you want and did not get?
Overseas travel.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?
Madagascar 2 - I like to move it move it....

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I went to the supermarket. Did some laundry and French homework. Still 25.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
More challenging work. Or more helicopter flying.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
More colourful than most years. More feminine in Brisbane because it was warm and I was in an office for 3 months.

33. What kept you sane?
Large quantities of tea. Nick.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Samuel Barnett. Always have a soft spot for Johnny Depp & Clive Owen though.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Couldn't say.

36. Who did you miss?
I miss my Lisa who's in Paris and Tamsin who's about to leave for the UK.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
Natalie, she's like a long lost sister :)

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
Don't be afraid of living. There's always time for the little things and romance is not dead.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

Wrench yourself from your demons
For far too long you’ve believed them
When they told you you were weak
Take a step in the tunnel
With the light ’round the bend
In the end
You can start to make amends
Who knows where you’ll go, baby
So much you could do!
Haven’t you heard, baby?
All will be well
If you want it to

A Quiet Start to the New Year

Three days into the New Year and I'm desperately clinging to my resolution for a better 2008. My weeks of scattered work are all culminating with an incredible impatience for my next contract. My mind is going a little spare without work. After all, she's my mistress.

New Year's Eve was one of the less painful of the 24 that I've experienced, although I can hardly count the earlier years as difficult as I was blissfully not thinking much at that point. I was lucky enough to spend brief amounts of time with quite a few friends, I'm sorry to say, achieving more quantity than quality in terms of time spent compared with number of friends seen. Still it was wonderful to see the Monash kids, who I seem to see annually, as well as a few of the Ceremonies crew. It was the first NYE that I've actually gone into the Melbourne CBD (or any city's CBD for that matter) to watch the fireworks. They were pretty and shiny as fireworks are want to be. There was champagne, singing and the odd reveler throwing sparklers from their balcony to mark yet another year passing.

The city was a ghost town the next day until mid-afternoon. Apparently I was up a little "early" for the New Year. I followed up my social evening with more social catch ups before I inevitably disappear from the social scene and drown myself in work. Well, that's sort of the plan any how...

When I finally made it home last night I curled up in bed and read for awhile before falling asleep at a far more respectable 00:30. This allowed me to wake up, for the first time in weeks, in the morning! So I spent much of that time in bed anyway, finishing Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I liked it a lot although it did make me feel a little sad.

One load of laundry later and I feel like the day has been reasonably productive!

Now, I'm waiting for the birds to start their morning song, triggering that part of my brain that allows me to fall asleep. Not long now...

Back to Baking

Happy birthday everyone. It's the seventh day of Chinese New Year today, also known as everybody's birthday (birthday of humans). I must say it's one of my favourite days of the CNY celebrations as it's the day that we feast on yu sang which is a raw fish salad. The raw fish is eaten to bring sucess through the year Aside from my love of sashimi I love this dish because it's a lot of fun to to eat. Before the salad is eaten everyone gets their chopsticks and tosses the salad together. The aim of this is to toss the salad the highest as it's meant to be luckier the higher you manage to toss it. This can get a little messy but most of the salad usually ends up back in the bowl! You're also supposed to eat noodles for longevity.

It's been a good day today. I've made progress on the sock that I started from the funky sock yarn that Gene bought me in Norway.

Sadly I am out of form with my knitting so my hand started to ache after a mere 24 rows of sock knitting.

Having been inspired by the cookie baking that occurred in Stranger Than Fiction, which we watched with Matt on Thursday, I started baking again. Gosh it's good to have an oven again!

Gong Xi Fa Cai

I've been in Melbourne for less than twelve hours and I've already settled back into relative normality. It's almost like I never left. Except the part where we drove down the Tullamarine Freeway and I noticed that they'd added bits. Or even when we were landing and the city skyline looked just that little bit different.

The flight was a little late but otherwise uneventful. I was grateful to have slept most of the trip home because the people sitting behind were being really obnoxious to the flight staff and it was starting to really get to me. It would seem that immigration has gotten a teensy bit scarier. I don't remember the second officer asking you lots of questions after you'd made it past the first officer. It's not particularly fun trying to explain why you've been in Qatar for four and a half months, what the Asian Games were and what a production asssitant did at 2am. I had trouble remembering what countries I'd visited in Europe too... Wasn't expecting an interview!

Anyhow, made it through immigration and for a brief moment didn't think my bags were ever going to appear on the carousel. They did and I headed to customs and declared my kueh lapis, Indonesian layer cake, then it was out the gates to see my parents for the first time in six months. It was great to see them and when I did I knew that I was home.

Upon arrival home there was a small exchange of random items that I'd picked up on my travels, the ones I could find anyhow then Dad brought out the long awaited char siew. Mmm BBQ roast pork. It was good. We started watching a bit of the Opening Ceremony before realising that it was 4am and clearly bed time for all.

I headed to my room, spilled open my baggage and then made the unwise decision to start reading the first book in His Dark Materials. After three chapters I forced myself to put it down and closed my eyes. A couple of hours later the sun was rising and I woke up and watched it through the bedroom window. There's something nice about coming home and watching the sunrise. It's not something that I'm usually up for!

More reading followed that and I eventually got out of bed at 9am to say good morning to my folks before they headed out. Now up I'm in the study with two snoring pugs behind me and all is well.

Tomorrow is likely to be a big day of getting paperwork sorted and applying for jobs but today is going to be a quiet one I think. Just settling in and enjoying being in one place before I disappear off again.

Oh and before I forget, gong xi fa cai to you all. It's my year this year and I'm hoping it's going to be a good one!

Hallas 2006, bring on 2007!

Last year was amazing. It was so fantastic that I can barely believe how well it went!

I'm not sure if I mentioned this at the start of 2006 and I'm not online so I can't go back and check but I started the year with two resolutions.
1. 2006 was going to be a better year (than the last 22)
2. Be able to juggle three balls comfortably

I can say that I well and truly achieved resolution one. Resolution two? Well, there's always 2007! I can vaguely juggle three balls... just not very long...

It was a rocky start to 2006 for me as I saw then New Year in through teary eyes but things only improved with each passing day. 2006 saw me travel to Japan & England, two places that I've dreamt of going since I was little. In fact I'm still in England as I type this. I was lucky enough to work on and watch four ceremonies in the space of eight months not to mention the incredible people I've met along the way.

My last day of 2006 was spent visiting Stonehenge with Gene & Nick. Gene's Aunt Jackie kindly drove us there despite the weather forecast for galeforce winds and allowed us to roam about the fields observing the rather ancient stones. My brain is still struggling to comprehend how old everything is over here. I took several photos but was distracted at one point by the rather stunning road that was just over the hill from Stonehenge. I was momentarily transported to my childhood weekends spent driving around regional Victoria hunting good roads for filming (preferably no powerlines). This was an awesome road. I mentioned this to Gene and he pointed out (rightly so) that he was more fascinated by the big rocks in front of us that had been there much longer than the road and that we'd just paid six pounds to see. Did I mention I was struggling with how old things are over here?

Actually, I think my brain is just struggling in general. I can't even remember what I posted last. I'm dying to write something and share how fantastic this trip is but I'm just lost for words. It's a little sad because everytime I manage to find Internet access I totally lose the ability to write anything. Typical!

Anyhow, after Stonehenge we had lunch in a pub and I started to send my first round of New Year well wishes via SMS to some of the folks in Australia. Not sure if all the messages made it though as I did get a couple of error messages but the thought was there! It was really great to hear back from so many people. Sending the messages made me miss home a bit. It made me realise how many people were back in Melbourne who I wouldn't see for quite some time.

After lunch we went back to Aunt Jackie's house where we were kindly allowed to use the Internet and laundry facilities. We all checked our emails and most importantly finances while making sure that we had some clean clothes for the New Year. Multi-tasking is a beautiful thing!

Once we were sorted out Tom drove us back to Guildford with Jamie and we had dinner at Dragon Phoenix. At long last we were able to enjoy the delights of char siew. We've only been searching all of France and most of Aldershot/Guildford for the last two weeks for this BBQ pork dish. It wasn't as good as Dad's cooking but it'll tie us over until mid-Feb! Along with our other Chinese restaurant staples (salt & pepper squid etc) we sampled some of the wine... Great Wall of Peking was less palatable than we thought it would have been but the slightly cheaper muscodet was an improvement.

I headed back to the flat after dinner because I didn't really feel up to a big night. I just want to knock off this stupid cold that I've carried here from Paris. Didn't think a long night of whiskey in a smokey pub was going to help things. Gene & Nick headed back with Jamie & Tom to a pub in Aldershot where they apparently saw the New Year in and made sure of it by celebrating until 8am.

My last couple of hours of 2006 were spent curled up in bed with my journal for some last minute musings before leafing through Fragile Things. The next thing I knew there were fireworks being let off and the cries of Aussie, Aussie, Aussie... OI OI OI resounding in the street below. Apparently we're not the only Australians in Guildford... It was a quiet night but just what I needed. The rest of the night was passed in bouts of sleep interjected with listening to my iPod.

I woke up today and had a relaxing morning of stretching, reading, a bit more knitting (I'm making Gene a scarf so he doesn't have to pay thirty pounds for a bought one) and then a trip to the shops to check out the sales. I achieved my mission of finding a skirt. It's amazing how four months in steel caps, high vis vests and hard hats can make you want to wear a skirt and knee high boots. Maybe that's just me.

At about 4pm I got a message from Nick saying that they'd made it home and were wondering where I was so I headed back armed with some wine, cheese and bread to see how they were faring. Nick was well if a little sleep deprived. Gene was a little... fragile. The rest of our night was passed over a game of Scrabble before the lads decided it was bed time.

Right now I'm archiving my files having just sorted through about five years of photos on my computer. My laptop is screaming for more memory at the moment so I'm rather appreciating the hard drive that Dad sent me.

Transfer's almost complete so I should finish here.

We're (finally) heading back up to London tomorrow. If all goes to plan we'll be seeing Wicked tomorrow night. There is talk of seeing the Tate Modern tomorrow so we'll see how that goes.

Plenty of photos to be uploaded when I get the chance of Paris and Stonehenge. Will try and ramble less in the next post... maybe that should be part of this year's resolutions list... I'll work on it.

A New Year, a Big Day and an odd odour

It's been an excellent weekend overall! I just can't believe it's Monday so soon! Friday night I had a lovely dinner at Mr Wolf with Nomes, Nick and Caroline consisting of some delicious pizzas. I sense it would be an expensive dining experience if I brought Gene there though... although it would actually allow me to finish the fabulously rich chocolate mousse... Hmmm...

I arrived home to two very tired and hungry pugs who were happy to see me... or at least their dinner bowls full, before spending the rest of my evening working on my crochet dress.

Saturday morning saw me unpicking the previous evening's crochet work because TV is less good for my counting and instruction following capabilities when tired... Apparently I have limits.. pfft!

Being Chinese New Year my folks wanted to ensure that I didn't miss out on seeing them even though they are in Singapore so they headed to Wisma Atria and stood under the web cam and called to say hi which was really sweet. The evening was spent with the Nic(k)s deciphering our Chinese/Western zodiacs and it was hilarious! On occassions crazily accurate and other times just crazy. It was good fun.

My very first Big Day Out was much fun if a little warm and muggy. The V Invigorate Tent was a real winner for me with the misting spray and bubble machine providing entertainment for not just the patrons but the security staff too. The Silent Disco was awesome! A definite favourite of the day with Gene & I dancing like maniacs to songs that were being broadcast through headphones to all on the dance floor. The Lord Mayor John So seemed most amused at the sight although I don't think he joined the dancers.

So a little tired and a little sunburnt I jumped into the car today to head into town for work to discover that school holidays have just come to a close. Despite having left the house 15 minutes early I ended up 15 minutes late... and $21 poorer for the parking fee. Not happy.

It was a slow day in the office. Mainly waiting for people to get back to me. Tomorrow's looking better with lots of paperwork to process. I love my paperwork!

The most interesting thing that happened today was the discovery of a dead mouse under my boss' hi-vis vest... Good reason not to leave stuff on the floor of our current office really. :)

Only Happy When It Rains

I seem to have missed out on another bright sunshiny day. I'm feeling a little under the weather today, it seems to have something in common with warm weather really... My throat is feeling particularly constricted and parched and I can't seem to rid myself of the cotton wool in my brain.

New Year's Day at the beach was good if a little tense at points. Large groups of people can be hard to co-ordinate without anyone taking leadership. It wasn't the warmest of days to be at the beach which worked out well for us. I didn't end up getting into the water for once - namely my feet are still being difficult - but I spent the afternoon lazing in the semi-cloud-covered sun. I still haven't gotten all the sand off. The bbq was delicious with the steaks cooked to perfection. We ended up going to Dot's place to eat and there was quite a large number of us. Most of Gene's close family were there and it was great to see them all. Will probably be doing the same again soon for Chinese New Year depending on what happens with my family. It's hard to tell because they tend to do things at the last minute... I'm likely to get a call the Monday before stating that as I'm aware Chinese New Year is on the 9th Feb so I am coming to the dinner right? They wonder why I have trouble coming to dinners...

Well, I can't ignore the other things I need to do today, like cleaning... I'm missing our lovely two bedroom place at the moment... this four bedroom house thing is just a bit too big for me to cope with! Only 16 days to go...

The circle game

A happy New Year to one and all!

Bedding arrangements have been made and everyone has all the bedding they need and or want. Everyone's now tucked away in bed, with the exception of myself (being the night owl that I am), and hopefully on their way to some pleasant dreams.

There's nothing better than having a group of your nearest and dearest friends around for a night of drinks, conversation and a good meal. That's the kind of festive celebration that I love.

Apparently friends are the new family (incidentally I dislike that phrase immensely, "insert random subject matter is the new other random subject matter", I can't pin point exactly why, but it bothers me). I'd be happy to agree with that really. I do spend more time with my friends than my family and they are generally the first port of call for support. I love my friends dearly and wish I could have spent some time with all my friends tonight, but it simply wasn't possible.

I had a fantastic time this year and I hope everyone else did too.

I must admit that I do wonder why we celebrate the start of a New Year. There must be some sort of history there...

A quick search on the Web has turned up a site that states that it is the oldeest of the holidays celebrated and is 4,000 years old. It used to celebrate the first day of Spring from what I gather, but due to the changing of our calendars over the years and various religious debates, our celebrations have changed from an eleven day festival to a one night celebration.

Tomorrow will see some time at the beach which is not a bad way to start the year really. Life's looking pretty rosy at the moment! Let's see what the new year brings...