Ginger is the New Gold!

I could not believe that there is actually a shortage of old ginger this season! I went to many Asian Grocers and many do not have stock. They only have young ginger which cost $15 a kilo! Then lest week I went to Springvale and managed to find some old ginger and they are priced at a staggering $35 a kilo!!! What a rip off!!! I am sooooo sooooo glad I had my confinement during the same time last year! Old ginger was selling at $8.99 a kilo then... phew~

I have to pay almost $4 for these bits...

Jonathan Saragoss

Are you looking for a brand consultant for your products or services? Well, with the Internet age, we can get just about any brand consultant to do the job for us without having to sacrifice on the high cost even if they are on the other side of the globe!

One of such consultant is Jonathan Saragossi, who specialises in branding, designs and positioning. They have an impressive portfolio which ranges from building a web site to web designing as well as designing mobile apps.

If you are looking for someone to work on these, Jonathan Saragoss is the one to go for!

Rosemary flowers

I've not planted any herbs before until we moved to Melbourne. My first herb plant was a potted basil but it hardly thrive until I transferred it onto the ground. It was quite demoralising as I can't even keep a potted herb plant alive even it required so little care. :P

Then I saw some rosemary plants when we visited Bunnings and decided to get a pot to try my luck. Since it is meant for outdoor, it managed to survive with very little care and was surprised to see these pretty flowers blooming...

Don't they looked pretty??? They are actually very tiny and has the shape of orchids which surprises me actually. I just loved the soft lilac color...

Buying a house is not an easy task!

We have inspected closed to 150 properties at least but has yet to decide which property we will buy. It is an extremely daunting task to buy a resale home as the location and floor plan don;t always go in sync. Sometimes we like the location but the floor plan of the house sucks and vice versa.

Though we have some sort shortlisted a few of the properties we are still unable to decide. Personally, I wish I could do background checks on why the owners wanted to sell their properties like those background checks at easybackgrounds.com but I know it can't be done.

I just hope when we do finally decide, the house we have chosen is the best one... *sigh*

How much sugar you take???

I got this image from one of the posts shared by a friend in Facebook...

It made me ponder on how much sugar I ingest a day and started feeling rather guilty when looking at this photo. Especially when I bring the kids to have Hungry Jack or Maccas where meals comes with a regular drink which can be refilled! The kids love all those juices and they are damn cheap here which always tempt me to get... just bought 3 x 2.4 Litres of Berri Juices! :P

Ok... will ration them out slowly so we don't over consume those deadly sugar!

A guitar collector

A few weeks back we went to inspect a house and the current owner is a guitar collector. He has some really cool looking electric guitars hung on the walls around the house. My son is so in awe looking at those guitars that he almost went to play with some of them but luckily I stopped him!

I am not too sure which brand they are. They do look like the yamaha np31 at guitar center but I am not certain since I am not into guitars. However, they do look really cool around the house, just like Hard Rock Cafes where you see such beautiful guitars hanging on the walls.

Brighton Beach

If you ever go to Melbourne, one of the places that you should go for photo taking is Brighton Beach which is situated at St Kilda. Those colorful beach huts is sure to make a really nice photo!

You can get there by Metro or driving. However, parking can be a little pricey... $4 for an hour. Well, if you just wanted to take a few shots of photos then it is ok... won't take longer than an hour :)

Outdoor fun

The weather has improved tremendously the past few days with temperature hoovering from the 14C to 24C which is so perfect for outdoor activities. Though it may be showers on and off at least we don;t have to deal with extreme heat like the previous few weeks. The kids are so excited that they can now enjoy more outdoor activities.

We wanted to plan for a picnic over the Eater holiday but everything has to be cancelled as hubby fell sick unexpectedly which saw him almost got admitted to the hospital. The kids had packed their north face bookbags with stuff they wanted to bring along but sadly we can't go since daddy was sick but promised them we will go another time.

Luckily everything is fine now and we brought the kids out this morning for some play at the playground which they were happy about.

Finally it feels like autumn!

After a record breaking of having 9 hot days of above 30C we finally got our cool change last Wednesday! Boy, am I so relieved!!! Really dislike the hot weather which is worst than when we were back in Malaysia.
At least there will be rain but here is like a big oven the entire day. Even at night the heat remained and we have to go to bed at 30C!

Well, so glad it is cooler now and we can look forward to winter... hoping to go to the mountain for some snow! The kids will be thrilled :)

Why is not Autumn yet?

Autumn officially started last week but till now we are still experiencing very summery weather. The past few days has been so hot... hitting 35C at least without much cool changes at all! The coldest we get is about 17C on some mornings.

Due to the super duper hot weather, I have not been wearing socks and that actually not a good thing as the humidity here is low making it extremely dry. My soles are starting to crack and I think I have corns on my feet too. *sigh* I might have to get some shoe pads to cushion them before they get worse. Can feel pain when I walk at times...

Can't wait for the cold weather to be here so I can put on my socks and my sneakers which can protect my feet from getting dry...

Free SUB for my Birthday

Never know I'll get free stuff on my birthday until I log in to my email. Luckily I did that else I would have missed it! Yes, I got a FREE lunch from SUBWAY Australia! How nice is that???!! Thought it was only a 6" Sub but it came with a drink which can cost up to $10!

Happened I already cooked and ate lunch that day but decided to go pick it up after picking my boy from school. Itelyu, my kids were thrilled! :)

Had a teriyaki chicken Sub with orange juice... YUM~

Thanks to Subway!

Well, if you would love to get a free Sub on your birthday, remember to LIKE their Facebook page! :)

Tools shopping

After moving to this bigger house, hubby has been tools shopping quite a bit as he can do so much more handy work now compared to when we were staying at the townhouse. I think he enjoyed doing all those DIY stuff as he is quite a handyman.

His latest purchases are some gardening tools (he is really into gardening now!!!) as we as some other tools for doing some of his DIY stuff. Not sure if he is looking to get any of those spring loaded knives since the one he has is a little blunt.

Well, will leave all these hardware stuff to him for now since I can't or don't have the time to do any DIY myself.

Chinese New Year 2013 - year of the Snake

Gosh! Chinese New Year came and gone in a flash!

Can't believe how time flies! We celebrated our second Chinese New Year in Melbourne without much fanfare... it was just like any other weekend for us though we attended a few gatherings with friends.

On the eve, we joined some Malaysians forum members for a reunion dinner gathering in the park and on the first day of Chinese New Year we were invited by our friend to his open home where he cooked a storm of satay and other local delicacies.

We managed to visit the Chinese New Year celebration in Box Hill and Glen Waverly this year and the kids had load of fun.

Hopefully when our baby is bigger next year we can enjoy more of the activities. 

Spring Festival with Jazz Festival in the Park

Spoke to my aunt in Perth the other day and she asked me when I'll be visiting again? I can't really tell her since I am not keen to travel far with my baby as she can't go for long rides so not going to think about flying for now! I hate it when my kids cry during flight as people will give us those killer stares!

I do hope to visit her and her family in the future and the best time to go to Perth is Spring as there are lots of stuff going on there. Would love to bring my kids to the Spring Festival over ar Kings Park where there are lots of activities for everyone. The last time we were there, they have Jazz Festival in one of the park and lots of people just had picnic there to enjoy the music and the beautiful weather.

Not sure if those musicians are students or professionals but it was so nice to enjoy live bands playing. Probably I can check out the next time and see if they use those fender jaguar at Musician's Friend. Maybe from that I can tell... perhaps?

China Bar Signature Buffet, Burwood

I would not say we like buffets very much but we love trying them out if we found an interesting one around. The first buffet I went to was to China Bar in Burwood a few months ago with some friends when they had the buy 2 get one free promotion. It was not that bad as I only need to pay $20 and the food was quite good... maybe it was my first time? :P

So, as hubby is still having his summer break I told him he should take the opportunity to try during weekday since it is less expensive compared to weekend or the dinner menu. From Monday to Friday they are charging $30 per pax for lunch for adults and kids from 4-12 years old has to pay 70% of the adult's price which I find a little too much as kids within the age of 4 to 8 don't eat that much. Our son only had a few pieces of the roast pork and some dim sum besides the desserts. Luckily they did not charge our 2 years old girl as she hardly eat anything besides the desserts... which she only had a spoon of this and that only.

They have quite good selection of food and it is non-halal since pork is served. In fact the most popular dish is the roasted pork. I love it simply because they did it really good with the crackling and stuff so it was fresh and crispy. They have an extensive dessert bar and the kids just went crazy! lol

Here are some of my serving of food...

I am like the kids, attracted by the huge varieties offered in their dessert bar! I can't resist all those cute bite size petit four so I had a few servings of that! I think I tried at least 60% of them! lol

If you are in Melbourne and not sure what to eat... you can try this... though I must say their service is so-so only... the staff are very snobbish!!!! In fact, they don't pick up the phone even when we called a numbers of time to make reservation so ended up we have to do it online.