A Disjointed Catch Up

I can't help but notice that my lack of blogging seems to stem from just after Gene & I broke up last year. It's almost as if when we broke up I couldn't find any words to write. No way of really saying what I thought and I really didn't feel a need to share how I felt as frankly that would have been boring.

So almost a year on I guess I'm still trying to find myself. Not so much remember what it's like to be single, but discover my independence and learn to enjoy it.

Okay, random burst of self-reflection over (phew!).

Let's just say that there wasn't a great deal of reading in May & June... Combined reading list for those months include:
1. The Dragon Queen
2. Pardon My French
3. Growing Up Asian in Australia

If only event management plans counted in the list... but as thick as some of them were, they're not quite books.

June consisted of many weekend trips from Brisbane to Melbourne & Sydney. Visiting family, farewelling friends and celebrating a birthday. It's a good thing I don't mind flying really. After the last weekend away the Festival really started to ramp up production. Defintely my favourite part that's not the actual Festival.

July saw the start of the Festival. We worked hard, we played hard. There were many opening nights and closing nights celebrated. It was good. Was lucky enough to see some shows which was rather novel. It was all over in a haze of beer, gin & wine and before we knew it we were bare-foot bowling on a beautiful sunny August day.

It would be hard to believe that only a fortnight ago I was sitting in the sun watching people bowl... except that I landed back in Melbourne on Saturday. It was not sunny. Luckily it wasn't too cold either. I keep telling myself that it's "the same temperature as Brisbane at night... but brighter".

Right now I'm in Sydney enjoying the sunshine and 20˚C days... well I was, it's supposed to storm tomorrow. Still trying to work out what I'll do tomorrow... am thinking it could be a good day for a museum or possibly the aquarium. I may yet fit an antique fair in.

I must admit I'm in a bit of a strange mood tonight. It's been a bit of a odd day. I woke up with a migraine and feeling a bit out of sorts. Did a bit of shopping. Had a nap. Woke up when my phone rang. It was Dad. My grandma in Singapore has stage 4 cancer. I pondered the fact that my Mum's family has had and excellent health history until now when both my Mum & Grandma have cancer. I'm starting to think that my random (morbid) thought that I'll die in the water is possibly incorrect and that it's more likely to be cancer. Strangely I'd rather the water but I'm trying not to dwell on that as I don't particularly want to die at this point in time. When I get bad news that I can't do anything about I turn to depressing music to soothe my woes. So after a good hour of depressing tunes I headed out to have cocktails with a few friends. Dinner followed the cocktails (although perhaps it should have been the other way around) and I must say I'm in a much better mood having gone out.

So to summarise... I had a fabulous time in Brisbane and miss the lifestyle up there although it's still not really my city. Am restless, reflective and honestly I think I'm a little angry with myself. Akrasia, what can I say? Do better. Rocks. Anyhow, no point dwelling on that, just have to keep moving forward. Right?

Less disjointed post next time, I promise.

April Reading List

April started strong with plenty of reading done in the first few days. Then three and a half seasons of Grey's Anatomy coupled with some serious knitting & crochet proved to be formidable distractions.

1. The Wolf of Wall Street by Jordan Belfort
2. Call Me Elizabeeth by Dawn Annandale
3. Brilliance of the Moon by Lian Hearn
4. The Ages of Lulu by Almudena Grandes
5. The Encyclopedia of Crochet Techniques by Jan Eaton

Not sure how May's going to go... I still have several books I'm catching up on or finishing off but there are already other books catching my fancy and I'm hoping to finish knitting my jumper in the next week or so... Not to mention the French homework & reading I have to add to the list...

Numerical Update

611 days ago I left Brisbane and just 4 days ago I returned.
3 of those 4 days were spent with a fever averaging 38˚C. Yesterday I drank 1.25L of water and 1.15L of flavoured still mineral water. I also slept for 12 hours. I'm feeling much better and the fever is almost gone :)

It took me 1.75 bus rides to work out how to get the bus to stop without actually having to call out to the bus driver (or in the case of my first bus ride, continuing for an extra three stops). Apparently I managed to get the really old buses twice on my first day. All other buses have had the red stop button I'm used to.

I've only been working at the Brisbane Festival for 3 days and today marks 100 days till the festival opens.

While I've been up here I have read one book, gotten lost once and been to the doctor once. I've made an appointment to go back to get my third and final (yay!) Gardasil vaccination.

Since arriving in Brisbane I have received 22 text messages from people I know, one text message from someone I don't know, 12 messages via facebook and many emails of which 2 were personally addressed to me.

I have to be back in the office in 10.5 hours and given that I need at least 45 minutes to wake up, 10-15 minutes to get to the bus stop (which is not that far away but the traffic lights, and the traffic, are a little kooky) and another 20 minutes to get to work, I should probably go to bed now.

For those interested it took me 34 minutes to write all this because I kept getting distracted by a Skype conversation regarding donuts.

March Reading List

Far less falling apart this month, much more normal levels of crazy in my head. Sadly this hasn't translated to the number of books read.

1. A Child's True History of Crime by Chloe Hooper
2. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett (re-read)
3. Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett (partial re-read, started but hadn't previously finished it)
4. Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett (partial re-read, as above)
5. Odd & The Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman
6. The Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel

So who guessed that I'd just finished unpacking my Pratchett collection this month?
I'm interested to note that I've consistently read six books per month for the first quarter of the year. It's not a conscious goal but seems to be my average for times when I'm not spending weeks on end being a book hermit.

Update
Knew I should have kept a running list as I read... I actually made it to 7 books (ten if you want to be accurate but I'm counting Lost Girls by Alan Moore & Melinda Gebbie as one book broken into three volumes.

February Reading List

Well, I've been slack with the blogging but life fell apart a little (at least in my head) so I've been taking some time to re-group.

Anyhow, books read in February were:
1. Thud by Terry Pratchett
2. Where's My Cow by Terry Pratchett (re-read)
3. The Black Crusade by Richard Harland
4. Green Eggs & Ham by Dr Seuss (re-read)
5. Shadowfall by James Clemens (re-read)
6. Hinterlands by James Clemens

Not a great deal of reading done and most of it happened on the 28th February but hopefully I'll manage to get a few more in. After all there's a medium box of books that have been waiting patiently for me to read them for almost 2 years now.

A Productive-ish Week

It's been a fairly productive week in some ways. I've replaced my lost diary (left it on the plane back from Sydney), baked breakfast muffins which formed my lunch for several days which has been my lunch for the week and finished the first book (Across the Nightingale Floor) in the series I've just started to read.

Work has been good although I've clearly been spoiled by my extended break as the short 6 hour days are still getting the better of my energy levels. I came home to day and slept for a good 4.5 hours even though we finished early due to the rain!

I've been feeling a little more tired lately since my cervical cancer vaccination. Not sure if that's a side effect or if it's all in my head but I'm glad that I've only got one more shot left for the immunisation. While it seemed less painful the second time round my arm still feels bruised. It should be better just in time for me to get my implant replaced... Oh the joys of pressure bandaging.

Tomorrow is the last day of the Fairy Factor which is the great 1hr free kids show I've been working on in the Fitzroy Gardens. It's been a real pleasure watching the kids (even when they rushed the stage). There have been some amazing costumes and more pink fairies than you could poke a stick at. I've made a mental note that if I have a daughter not to dress her in a pink fairy costume, if she's into fairies, as I'd never find her in a fairy show audience. On Monday morning I'll start three days of Set Sail at the Docklands Shed 2. I'm really looking forward to that, I only hope the weather holds up a bit for the duration of the event. There's a possibility that I'll give the flying trapeze a shot next week but we'll see how that goes!

Back in Town

After a relaxing few days in Sydney and a delayed flight I'm back in Melbourne counting down the hours until the cool change sweeps through the state.

Overall I did well, returning with just one addition to my library, Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn. While the cover and Japanese themes have always grabbed my attention, I'm fascinated by the concept of a nightingale floor. Perhaps I should add that to the list of random things that might be cool to have in a house (I've been watching Grand Designs again).

Having enjoyed a few days off (it only counts as a holiday if I'm elsewhere... while I'm down in Melbourne not working it's more like unemployment or being lazy) I'm ready to tackle the grand task of sorting out my life. I'm currently considering treating that as a job in itself. It's the control freak in me really.

Anyhow, tomorrow I'm going to start my lists afresh. Set new deadlines for various bits of paperwork and generally spring clean my life and get rid of as much clutter as possible. We'll see how long the enthusiasm holds... hopefully long enough to spark the next challenge!

It's good to be back at work though, even if it's not the challenge I'm seeking, at least there's some structure to my day to keep me from languishing in the comfort zone that is Melbourne.

Three Weddings and a Park

I spent most of the day sitting in Hyde Park enjoying the sunshine and drizzle with equal pleasure. I was just grateful to have escaped the heat of Melbourne. Sadly cooler weather brings mosquitoes so I ventured into the city in search of some insect repellent and something to make the stinging go away. This just adds to the recent trend of buying practical yet contextually strange things on my outings. I bought a pair of rigging gloves on the recent beach trip.

Armed with the spray I managed to read half of Signal to Noise before the start of my shift. I ended up working on the Weddings at the Macquarie Street stage. I think they went well, but I only saw the third wedding as I spent much of the evening waiting for deliveries up the road. It was a beautiful if brief ceremony (each of the three weddings went for approximately 20 minutes) and the three couples looked happy despite the inclement weather. It was great to bump into people who I knew who were working on the festival too.

After work I caught up with Tamsin after a small delay (who'd have thought that there would be two polar cone vans in the same intersection?) and we roamed Hyde Park in search of a bar. Spiegeltent was closed for a private function so our plan had been somewhat foiled. We failed to find a bar in Hyde Park although we were sure that there was one nearby... after all it was opening night of the Festival! We trekked to Martin Place before deciding to head back to Tam's to drop off my bags and find a bar at nearby Oxford Street.

We ended up with G&Ts in hand noting that at the bar we'd stopped at people seemed to be segregated into all male or all female groups of varying sizes. There were also enough candles arranged on a shelf to inspire a funeral-esque atmosphere so we decided to move on. Not managing to find anywhere else that caught our fancy we headed back towards her apartment to make a final stop a the Irish pub which turned out to be closed. The universe seemed to be telling us it was time for bed.

This morning we got up, lazed about and then headed to a lovely little bookshop & cafe for breakfast and departed caffeinated, fast broken and armed with a book. Secondhand bookstores are a dangerous place. Throw in food and drinks and I may never leave!

I've finished reading one of the books I've brought up with me and have enjoyed an afternoon relaxing in the cool but wonderfully fine weather that seems to be gracing the city. It feels good to be somewhere different even if it still feels the same.

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...

Books Read in January 2008

January
1. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
2. Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson
3. Signal to Noise by Dave McKean & Neil Gaiman
4. Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn
5. Grass for his Pillow by Lian Hearn
6. One Red Paperclip by Kyle MacDonald

Today's post is brought to you by the numbers 0.75, 1, 1.5, 2

0.75 is the number of hours sleep I've had in the last 32 hours. I sense my nocturnal habits may be at an end.

1 is the number of days I've worked this week. It's good to be working again, even if it's just an orientation.

1.5 is the number of cards I ended up writing yesterday before being distracted by the arrival of the Schoeller & Stahl Zermatt yarn that Dad bought Mum & I for Christmas. I am now knitting a sweater despite the summery weather in the vague hope I'll finish it in time for Autumn/Winter 2008.

2 is the number of chapters I've read of The Ghost's Child. Since my last post I've discovered that The Pleasure of my Company doesn't actually have chapters. As a result I'm having a lot of trouble not finishing it in one deliciously indulgent reading. I'm trying to pace myself.

Infrequent Insomnia Blog

Lately it seems that I only write my infrequent blog posts in the wee hours of the morning. Mind you it seems to be getting later each time so who knows, maybe I'll find myself, over time, posting during sensible hours again.

Last time I was up at all hours typing away I talked about awakeness. Well in the day that followed, I remember little of the LX plots - I think one was canceled. Don G was great despite having to leave the theatre just after the start of Act 1 because I was feeling faint. That night I made it home after stopping by the side of the freeway for a nap. The next day I decided to see a doctor. Tonsillitis. Never in my life have I had tonsillitis that made me feel quite so dead. Armed with antibiotics I headed home to sleep off the time that it would take the antibiotics to kick in. Two days apparently. Two days later I was in the doctor's office again. Apparently it had gotten worse and my throat was quite swollen and it was now affecting both sides of the throat which was making breathing, eating and drinking awfully more taxing than usual. Stronger antibiotics were ordered as well as something to help make them easier to stomach. The tech run felt like it went forever. Seems the medication that made the antibiotics easier to stomach were also making me feel cloudy as all hell but I was under the impression that was the tonsillitis. Oops. No more driving if I have that medication again.

Before I knew it the show was running and even sooner it was over. I finally took some time off like I'd been speaking about doing for quite some time. Three days into my break I was bored and looking for work again.

Mind you I've had a rather enjoyable time since then. I've since, many thanks to Tam, seen Alcina and Tales of Hoffman just to complete the season of operas. I've also seen more contemporary dance which was a little lost on me but the set and lighting was very sexy. Aside from that my hours have been spent sorting out paperwork and trying to work out a plan for the foreseeable future. I've also re-discovered reading as a pastime. Robert Charles Wilson's Spin was a fabulously engaging read, now I'm slowly whittling away at the books sitting next to my bed. Steve Martin's Shop Girl is currently battling several sci-fi fantasty novels for my attention. However I did find myself rather taken with the film so it's hard to say which will triumph. I suspect neither and I'll just flit between them.

Given that the sun is likely to appear in the sky shortly I should stop writing and attempt some sleep before it wakes me up. Oh well. I figure that this time on Tuesday I'll be on my way to work so it's probably not a bad thing to be a little nocturnal. Seems to be my natural state anyhow.

End ramble.

Environmentally Friendlyish

We've had some delightfully "cool" days up here with the maximum temperature varying between 25˚C and 29˚C which made work feel much more pleasant. No air-conditioning required, just open up the doors! We even made it to a low of 15˚C some nights. Rumour has it the camping store has sold out of thermals.

I've made quite a few trips to the supermarket in the short time I've been here. It seems to be my hang out of choice when away from home (Woolies is no match for Carrefour in terms of random items that you don't need). However the green bags just never seem to be in stock... so while browsing the aisles I found a few balls of mercerised cotton yarn and hey presto, an environmentally friendly bag was born.



So now I'm taking my bag, book, hook and left over yarn, off to find myself a patch of park to make my own for the afternoon while I wait for the sun to do it's work and heat up the solar panels for the hot water system. Tonight is looking good for the first hot shower in three days!

Relaxing Darwin

Darwin is a gorgeous city, if a little warm for my tastes. There are tropical trees in almost every street and the wildlife - early rising - is amazingly vocal. Having been here less than a week it's still a bit rosy for me but I can imagine coming back for a relaxing break.

I took some time to walk around the city today, partially to sate my need to explore and also to fulfill my mission to get a hat before tomorrow's festival. It was a pretty successful day!

My walk took me down Mitchell Street which is one of the main streets in Darwin. It's the backpacker and tourist street complete with the 24 hour Coles which I'm sure I'll be well acquainted with soon. I browsed a couple of shops and tried on a ridiculous number of hats before I found myself in a hat shop just off Mitchell Street. I made the decision not to leave the shop until I had a hat in hand. I'm ashamed to say it took half an hour of hunting through hats and trying them on before I found one that fit, with a wide brim, that didn't look too ridiculous.

Armed with a hat I headed towards Fisherman's Wharf to check out the Darwin Seafood Festival site where I'll be stage managing tomorrow (as you do on your first weekend in Darwin). It's looking good and I watched the sound check for Double Entendre who played an awesome version of Caravan. I think it'll be a hot but really great day tomorrow and I'm looking forward to it.

One other piece of exciting news (if you're me) involves the purchase of a second-hand book in what could become my favourite shop in Darwin... the secondhand bookstore that buys books as well as sells them. While browsing the sci-fi/fantasy section I was looking for the familiar covers... Pratchett, Adams... Gaiman... when I realised that I didn't see any familiar Gaiman covers... On closer inspection, I found a copy of Ghastly Beyond Belief, the somewhat out of print book of quote that he wrote with Kim Newman. Best $6 I've spent in awhile. There goes lunch tomorrow...

Before I run off to lounge on my bed and soak up the good-bad sci-fi/fantasy goodness, I want to thank everyone who's sent their well wishes after my last post. I was in a bit of a horrible place but it's getting better now. Mum seems to be in good spirits and there's a team of people looking after her so I know she's in good hands.

A Longer Post for a Shorter Day

First day back in a theatre today and it was a good feeling. Bump ins are good fun, almost as fun as bumping out...

It was a slow starting day beginning with a hot shower that I'm grateful for as Dad didn't have hot water due to a black out. I was less awake than I thought I was as I managed to stick my right index finger partway into the toaster in an attempt to retrieve my toast. Unsurprisingly this resulted in a small burn on the right side of my finger. Sadly despite my first aid training the first thing I did was swear and blow on it before thinking (quite literally) what the hell are you doing you idiot, run it under cold water! Which I did. It didn't help. Stupid burn. The chilled water made it a bit better but eh... give it a few days.

After work I headed to Knox to get a pressie for my cousin Nadia who's birthday is on Sunday and to pick up a couple of headbands for Mum. I also picked out my birthday books using the voucher from my family in Canberra. I ended up with A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka, A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon and another book who's title escapes me but has something to do with time lords from memory (not Dr Who).

Armed with a bagful of books I headed to the hospital to visit Mum. She was in fine spirits and was sure to let everyone know that she was feeling much better and was ready to go home. We're still waiting for the blood test results to come back but the specialist/surgeon seems fairly confident that she can come home tomorrow. In true Mum fashion she's already packed and ready to leave. Ever the organised one in our house!

Tomorrow is a long day of spending QT with Mum and trying to catch up on sleep, bookended by a job interview in the morning and a bump out late that night. It's good to be busy again. If only for a day!

A Shadow of A Smile

"One more chapter of Lost Girls" turned into the rest of Book 1. As a result I'm limiting myself to reading Lost Girls only during the day.

Today seems to be dragging its heels a little, although I have been up for five hours so I suppose it feels like awhile. I waved everyone goodbye on their way to work and have two snoring pugs beside me for company.

Random small projects keep popping up in my mind as I try to pinpoint something to occupy my time. The other night I started to transform The Arctic Measles That Never Were into comic format but it was a much greater task that I could accomplish at 0300 with no forward planning. I'm back to sketching panel layouts now and trying to decide how to illustrate the characters/photos.

I also had a play with PhotoBooth again having just worked out what the iGlasses function does with my webcam. Can you tell I had fun?

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!

Pleasant Day

I've been in home for almost a week now and it feels like I never left.

The job hunt has slowed down a bit but I'm happy just making my way through the laundry and unpacking. I've also started going through old clothes and my wardrobe is already looking much more reasonable.

Sleep patterns are better than normal (ie. I'm awake when most people are and haven't turned nocturnal yet). I think sleeping with the curtains open is helping. It's hard to sleep when the sun is streaming down on your face.

Today Gene's dad, John, came to visit and spent the afternoon chatting with us (Mum, Gene & I) before we headed into town to meet Cathy, Gene's mum, and Dad for dinner. I think we may have ordered a little much which is likely to be my fault as I was keen to catch up on favourite Chinese dishes but it was an excellent meal!

It's looking to be a pleasantly quiet weekend. I think I'll finish reading The Amber Spyglass tomorrow. I'm not particularly far into it but it's been an easy and engaging read for the last two books.

I think I'll spend most of the weekend trawling through the photos from the last six months and posting the ones that aren't too terrible on my Zoto site. When I get bored of that I'll return to my sock knitting which is currently driving me a little crazy. I seem to have lost the ability to count.

I'm actually looking forward to going to rehearsals on Sunday to help Naomi out with her show. It's a show that I wanted to see while I was up in Brisbane last year but failed miserably to make it. So it should be good. Always happy to help. Especially since I'm not doing much at the moment. It'll be good to be back in a rehearsal space. It's been a while!

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!

Homeward Bound

I'm on my way home at last. By the time I arrive in Melbourne on the 18th February I'll have been away for exactly 6 months.

Our travel arrangements of late have been rather interesting. We were hoping to be able to depart on the 18th February but were doubtful of getting seats. As a result we've been calling Emirates on a daily basis to see how we were doing. Today Gene called up and was advised that we'd all been kicked off the waiting list as it was too long and that the first day it reopened was the 20th Feb. They also mentioned that I should fly soon as the ticket that I was under the impression (due to the printed words at the top of my old ticket) was valid for a year from issue was only valid for six months according to their system. Not wanting to have to buy a new ticket to argue this later we took the one ticket back to Australia that they had. The only catch is I'd have to leave tomorrow.

So I'll be leaving Gene & Nick (again) and heading home first to pave the way for them. With any luck they may be able to get a flight on the 25th Feb but if not they're confirmed for the 28th February.

After recovering from the shock of having to leave tomorrow instead of in a few days or a week my first instinct was to pack everything that I wanted to do into my one day here.

First port of call after a fine breakfast of currypuffs was to take Nick down to Far East Plaza and Orchard Road to see the main shopping strip of Singapore.

We were briefly distracted at Takashimaya where we had a Korean lunch and I bought traditional snacks like mwah chee which is a rice flour dough dipped in crushed peanuts (taste better than it looks and sounds) and some Japanese sweet pancakes (again with peanuts).

Once at Far East Plaza we took him to our favourite ever bookshop, Sunny, where Gene and I proceeded to purchase new libraries.

Reading List for early 2007
- His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman
- The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers
- The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy: and Other Stories by Tim Burton
- The Science of Discworld II: The Globe by Terry Pratchett
- Wicked by Gregory Maguire (Gene bought this one)

Nick left with nothing which was very restraint of him.

Having only just eaten less than an hour ago we trooped upstairs to have Hainanese Chicken Rice at the shop that I've gone to since I was a wee lass. You don't even have to order now. You just let them know how many people need a seat and as you sit down they roll out the rice, chicken, broth and off you go! Two serves for $5.60. Now that's what I love about eating in Singapore.

Next stop was Pan Photo to visit Doris where Nick made up for his lack of shopping at Sunny Bookstore. We walked out of there with one 80GB iPod (Nick), a set of in-ear headphones and iPod Nano case (Gene) and an iPod remote (mine). After that it was time for the boys to stop for a beer if only to interrupt our shopping.

We decided we'd spent enough money but should get some clothes for Chinese New Year's day (you're meant to wear new clothes). We hunted for red shirts for the boys but were unsuccessful. It's red t-shirts instead. I managed to find a lovely red skirt which is about a million miles too long for me but I like the hem (well bottom 20cm) of my skirt dragging on the ground... ahem.

If you think that's the end of the shopping then (to quote Captain Jack Sparrows), clearly you haven't been to Singapore. We headed to Bedok to find some shorts for the boys so they didn't melt. This was a successful trip where they found shorts and I found the world's most comfortable bra. Win win situation for all.

Finally it was time to head home for a rest before heading out for a meal of more local foods...

Tonight's Menu
- BBQ Stingray - Gene's favourite
- Sambal Prawns
- Sambal Sotong (calimari)
- Fried Oyster with egg
- oyster omelette
- 10 x otah (fish cooked in coconut leaf)
- 30 x satay sticks (10 x beef, 10 x chicken, 10 x lamb)
- char kway teow
- another squid & veggie dish that I don't know the name of
- 1 x fresh coconut
- 4 x lime juice slushies
- 1 x fresh sugar cane juice
- 1 x grass jelly drink
- 1 x long neck of tiger beer

We're in the process of trying to introduce Nick to as many of the local foods that we love and crave when we're in Singapore. Needless to say we're all rather full.

So tomorrow I'll have some bak-kwa slices of marinated pork and whatever else that catches my eye before I run off to catch a plane back to reality. It's going to be a big day!