Here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush...

So this is what mulberries look like! There's a mulberry tree in my grandmother's house and she picked me some mulberries. They are incredibly sour. You have to eat the ones that are the darkest red as the ones that are normal red are as sour as 10 lemons combined. 

This is the dress that I bought from a Singaporean online shop. Pictures do not do it justice as the print is so pretty, and the heart cut-out design is to die for!

I went to church at 6.30am in the morning (the earliest I've ever been to church). So after church we adjourned to a nearby mamak with my grandparents, cousins, uncle and aunt to have some Malaysian-style breakfast ie. oily, greasy, bad for heatlth....

Roti tisu which spans 2 tables 0_0.

Paper tosai.

Went to get my hair washed and blow-dried with mom, came home and slept. Woke up (not hungry) and ate nasi kerabu. The more I ate the hungrier I became- spicy food just increases your appetite FML.

My cousin is heading back to Tasmania tomorrow before uni commences so we decided to have a going-away dinner for him at Waterlily. It's a Balinese-inspired restaurant and the food was surprisingly quite good.

The place was very nicely decorated with Balinese artifacts.

Grandma + Grandpa

Me with cousins and Grandma

The different kinds of food with your choice of meat, all served with kangkung, keropok, sambal, tempeh salad and serai with chilli padi.

Ok, have to go now, relatives are over at my place for CNY!

I suddenly had an idea...

..to transfer my memory card to my mom's camera and voila! Pics uploaded :D Brilliant, if I do say so myself.

Came home to my veryveryveryveryveryveryveryvery old Care Bears. They look so vintage. The one on the left looks nothing like the one on the right, and they both look NOTHING like the one I have at home now. Dad gave them both a good wash before I returned.

It's Chinese New Year at home when you can see decoration all around, hampers and red-coloured stuff everywhere.

Fatt Gou, anyone?

Let me humour you with a pic of how I looked 13 years ago. This was taken in London Chinatown. And my sister- bahahahahaahahah.

And that's me on the left, probably 21 years ago? :D

A corner of my house that isn't red.

Opened this up to find...

An edible Chanel eyeshadow palette cookie! Complete with brushes. So cute. But Mom warns not to eat it as it's been sitting in the house for a very long time.

The old black leather sofa got upgraded to an L-seater. So comfy!

Delicious Chinese New Year lunch fare. From L-R: Sliced abalone with snow peas, random pineapple, 'lin gou' and mouth-watering salted chicken made by my grandma.

Lotus Root, or better known as 'Lin Ngau' soup.

Braised sea cucumber with fish maw, mushrooms and scallops. Mmmmm.....I could never get this in Melbourne.

Self-explanatory.

Salted chicken (from the picture above) accompanied by chicken gizzard. Trust me, it tastes wayyyyyyyyyyyy better than it looks.

'Lap cheong' (which is chinese sausage) with 'Mou Kou'. I have no idea how to translate that.

Since I was in Melbourne last year and missed Chinese New Year, these are my angpows from last year! I happily spent the day before the actual Chinese New Year opening these.

And these are for this year :) It's a good excuse to still be a kid not be married. 

I've been shopping for beauty products which have achieved cult status in Japan. No harm in giving them a go, right? The mascaras and eyeliner are from Majolica Majorca and the moisturiser is from Aquamoist. I went a lil bit crazy and also bought the cleanser from the same range. The mascaras have fibres in them which stick to your lashes to make them longer and thicker.

Saw this at a counter whilst Mom was paying for some stuff. Rainbow-flavoured Mentos! I don't really feel like eating it now that I've bought it. Maybe I should have just taken a picture of it :s It's got raspberry (that's the one with the SOLD sticker on it). As far as I can remember, all raspberry flavoured stuff tastes gross- like medicine...cough medicine to be precise.

And have I been indulging in yummylicious hawker food. This is Ipod Hor Fun- nothing in Melbourne can beat this. Team this with red-hot chilli padi and ginger and you've got a winning combination.

My arteries would come out and strangle me if they could but how can you not gobble down authentic roti chanai, roti planta and tosai rawa with their respective fish curies, dhal and coconut curry? Wash all that down  with Teh Halia (Ginger Milk Tea)to feel a lil bit healthier (Ginger is good!)

Will post up some of my buys in the next post- especially the dress I ordered online and got it shipped from Singapore. It's sooooooooooo pretty!

Gong Hei Fatt Choi everyone!

Gong Hei Fatt Choy!

For non-Cantonese speaking readers, that's Happy Chinese New Year to you!

I'm currently back home in KL city, nomming on heaps of Malaysian food (hawker food, home cooked food, mamak food, you name it).

I have plenty of pics BUT this laptop I'm using can't read my memory card, so no pics just yet- hence no update for the past few days.

Basically all I've been doing is eating and shopping. I've already been to Sunway Pyramid, 1 Utama and Pavillion and today I'm heading to Midvalley....and it's only my 4th day back :) What else is there to do here?

Alrighty, off to eat brekkie and then shopping round 4!

Have a good one peeps!

Hutong

Tagged along yet again when the boy took his parents out for dinner at Hutong in Prahran. That place is so swanky compared to the one in the CBD! Even the cutlery look nicer.

Mmm you can't go wrong with strips of ginger in vinegar. *Slurp

One of Hutong's signature dishes is the 'Xiao Loong Bao' so naturally we ordered that. This was delicious! It was so well made with lots of soup in the dumpling. Yummy. The thickness of the skin was just right as it didn't break when you picked it up, nor when you gave it a little jiggle. Just for fun :D

If you look hard enough you'll see two ducks roasting in an oven on the far wall. They also serve peking duck but they're not as good (in fact, nowhere as good) as the one in Old Kingdom. 

Care Bear says good night!

A picking we will go!

The boy's parents are down under for a holiday so I tagged along and we went to an apple/nectarine/peach farm in Bacchus Marsh. Road trip! It was also the first time I saw the speed limit raised to 110km/h. On the way back a white butterfly went *SPLAT!* on our windscreen.

Oh hi apple trees! It was a fairly small farm, and we were only allowed to pick from 3 rows. There were other trees around, but I guess they weren't ripe enough to be picked from.

 

:D

This small lonely apple will soon be in my hands.

There were so many apples that'd fallen from trees, and were rotting on the ground -_-

More apples in hiding. Ha ha here I come!

Smallest, cutest apple ever!

Siamese apples.

Stealing a bite...hehe. I ate an apple, 2 nectarines and 1 peach while I was there. And to think in total I only picked 3 apples and 2 nectarines.

 

Ever wondered what nectarine trees looked like? To be honest, neither did I. But they look like...

...this!

 

Signing off with what the boy would call an 'ass-crack' apple :D

xox, till next time!

Spoke too soon...

Just as I published the post below I went out and saw a few new, interesting things....

 

I love freebies! Here's my $10 gift voucher from Starbucks- for completing a survey for being a University of Melbourne alum. Here I come, caramel macchiato! Yummm.

 

And then I saw these at Queen Victoria Market. What are they?!! They look like mini ostriches plus chicken plus poodle head dogs.

 

Guess what I chanced upon? Achachas! Now my search for them isn't fruitless anymore. (har har am I funny?)

Achachas are.....(taken from the website here) highly prized, having been cultivated for centuries in domestic orchards in the tropical Amazon Basin of Bolivia. Difficult to grow, it has not been commercialised internationally until now.

Taste

Delicious, refreshing, exotic, tangy, effervescent . . . no wonder the name translates as "honey kiss"!

It is refreshing to eat, at ambient temperature, when served cold or even frozen. There is a fine balance between its sweetness and its acidity, creating a unique taste sensation. It has exotic appeal similar to the mangosteen, longan, rambutan and lychee. The Achacha is a cousin of the mangosteen which is known as the "queen of tropical fruit" throughout Asia. 

Mangosteen-clones!

do do doo....

I haven't done anything interesting lately that's worth blogging about. It's been work, sleep, eat, watch 30 rock. That show is amazing! It's satirical take on life makes it believable, yet funny. I'm up to season 2, can't wait to start season 3.

What else has been happening? Hmm, I'm heading back to KL next Friday night! So excited. It's been more than I year since I've been back..wondering if anything has changed. I still haven't booked my return flight yet, contemplating making a short trip to Bangkok or Singapore before I return to Melbourne. But home for Chinese New Year! That's just gonne be massive. Schweeeeeeeet :)