The day every “growing” woman love to hate…..

19 Nov 2006, Sunday.

Happy Birthday to me
Selamat Hari Jadi
祝我生日快乐
Happy Birthday to me

Yup… I’ve just officially increased my age by 1 (which is something I don’t particularly look forward to… It gets kinda scary when you fill up forms and your age brackets gets lower and lower into the page. Miss the days when I could tick off 20 – 25… sob sob…..)

Anyway, my sweet hubby brought me out to a Sukiyaki buffet lunch where we pigged out and stuffed ourselves silly.









The day before, my sis specially made a trip down to UQ to hand me my presents - from my parents, my aunt and herself! (Thanks Sis!)

And my parents and in-laws wished me a very Happy Birthday personally on the phone.

My housemates and friends also wished me well and presented me with my present!

My school buddy wished me a very happy birthday early in the month in her blog.

My brother got my friend who was visiting Brisbane to pass me my present in early Nov.

On top of the buffet, my hubby also got me (and himself) a present. A high tech toothbrush that hopefully will mean no more painful, stressful trips to the dentists!



My pressies!!!








Notice the small tube beside the electric toothbrush?
Can you take a guess at what it is? Here's a closer look...


It comes with a handphone strap.






Have you guessed it?


It fits in your palm.








It's super slim.






It's a 2GB flashdrive or thumbdrive as some knows it. Unbelievable! Things are getting tinier and tinier nowadays! It's so slim and it comes with a handphone strap so you can strap it to your mobile and bring it everywhere with you. All you need to do is just plug it into any USB port and voila ~ you've got a portable 2GB mobile harddrive!

Thanks to my housemates, I'm the proud owner of this very cool flashdrive.

I’m so loved and blessed! Thank you all, for making my day.

Talk about Extreme Weather….

15 Nov 2006, Wednesday – A day of profuse confusion for Queenslanders and East-side boarders…

The “Weather God” have gotten created and decided to push a gust of wind from the Antartica while maintaining the hot summer sun on Australia. What happens next had put a lot of people into confusion, frustration and some even jubilation.

The cold front from the south brought along cold gusts of strong winds, rain, hail and snow two weeks short of summer!!! What the???

Queensland alone had 3 different kind of weather. The northern part of the state was baked under the hot 40 degree temperature while the south east (Brisbane) was whacked left right and centre with strong gusts of cold wind and pelted with a heavy down pour of rain and smacked with hail. The area close to the NSW border, higher up on the mountains was “iced” with snow!


Heavy snowfall reported in some parts of NSW and Victoria.









Hail in Queensland







Strong gusts of wind had whipped away numerous roofs in Queensland...





Pictures courtesy from Courier Mail.

Sydney recorded an all time low temperature of 8.5 degrees in November!

A lot of us have put our winter clothing and quilt away, only to have to drag them all out again because “somebody” decided to have a little fun!

Still, lucky for us, the hail storm in Brisbane was extremely short and the hail was tiny (smaller than the smallest ‘guli’ / marble), which spared our car getting “pock marks”.

Biking ON water....

12 Nov 2006, Sunday - Have you ever tried "riding a bike' ON water?

Esmond and Roger did it! Mind you, it needs special skills and good coordination!

Roger invited us to join him and his colleagues for "Pump-a-bike" on the Brisbane river in South Bank. We had never heard of this form of "exercise" and could not even envision what it is until .....

This is a bike with no wheels! And you don't pedal... you hop! haha... very interesting...

One of the instructor, teaching the basics and theory of "Pump-a-bike", and demonstrating how to get on the bike and "skip" on the water...

After much demonstration and pursuasion, the boys stripped ....

put on their life jackets....

plucked up their courage....

and plunged into the water with gutso....

It wasn't easy.... The boys "plonked" straight down into the water without even a single skip in the water!

How do they do it?!?!?!









At last, after some serious observation, the boys managed a couple of "skip" in the water...

Simple as it may seem, the blades are pretty sharp. And if you are not mindful of where you put your limbs, there will be consequences....












Though they didn't managed to cross the river on the bike, the boys had fun. It was the experience that counts!

Of Rare Visitors and peculiar exercise......

5 Nov 2006 - 11 Nov 2006 -> Amelia and gang arrives!

After 4 months of "long distance relationship", Amelia and I are finally "reunited". Amelia is finally here in Brisbane with her family for a break!

After picking her and family (total 10 pax!) from the airport, we headed off to South Bank where Thor made a bee-line for the bike exhibition in the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, Hall 4.

While Thor drools over bike stuff, Amelia and gang proceeded to the South Bank market for a walk and some grubs.


Having fish and chips on South Bank.







When we are through with the walking and sun tan, we split up and drove to Harbour Town Shopping Mall in Helensvale, for some good old retail therapy. Amelia and Sheryl joined Esmo and I in our Mazda, while Thor being the designated driver of the 12 seater mini bus ferried the rest of the gang to the next destination.


Tired visitors "knocked out" in their ride down south.









The gang had 2 hours.

After the retail therapy, we all needed some gastronomical therapy.








Nothing that an ice cream and a hot dog couldn't "cure".







After settling the visitors down at Isle of Palm, Currumbin, we heeded our growling stomachs and had our dinner of Perfect Satisfaction at Oyama (Japanese Restaurant).

As Esmo and I are not holiday makers, we bid goodbye to the "lucky ones" and agreed to meet up again on Friday, 10 Nov 2006.

After work on Friday, Esmo and I drove straight down to Surfer's Paradise to meet up with Amelia and family for dinner at Captain's Table. The steak and lobster was absolutely delicious!

With our stomachs filled with good food, we decided that to see an organism that would never be seen in the Lion City. We drove 1 hour westward towards Natural Bridge.

The whole group of 12 started trekking down to the valley in search of a cave sprinkled with glow worms at an ungodly hour of 11.30pm!









Armed with torch lights, we walked in a single file down the dark, cold, damp trek. One missed footing could mean drawing on our insurance payouts. Hence, we were extremely cautious since we were the only people that were there in the park! (There would have coaches of tourists if we were there earlier). It was like we were stranded in the wilderness as we had the whole forest to ourselves! Without the torch lights, we would never be able to see one feet ahead of us!

The kids were dragged out from the car, disturbed from their peaceful slumber!







After half an hour of "treacherous" walk, we've finally arrived at the cave! We were sprayed with water from the waterfall nearby. The current was so strong, that it was like drizzling! (Nobody could have stood a chance if we slipped into the waterfall. The current was very strong, made so by the storm Gold Coast had on Wednesday!).

This is the most quantity of glow worms that Esmo and I have seen (compared to our previous trips there). It was as if we were looking at the whole galaxy of stars! It was beautiful (but we couldn't show you how beautiful as any strong light / flash will kill the worms, hence, no photography allowed).

When we've had enough of the worms (and water!), we headed back to our car. We took a wrong turn and nearly didn't make it back!

All pumped up after the midnight trekking!







After a few hours sleep, the visitors had packed all their purchases and belongings, checked out and headed for their final retail therapy at DFO before heading home.

2 hours later, we were back at the airport, Amelia and gang checking in to their flight on SIA.

Shaun and Sheryl with their new purchases - sunglasses and new school bags...

Satisfied, happy visitors....

Thanks for coming guys and girls. It has been fun. Hope to see you again soon!

The Race that stopped the nation....

7 Nov 2006, Tuesday - Melbourne Cup Day.

A day where all Melbournians get a day off work, a day where all punters are glued to their TV boxes, a day where gambling is accommodated and even encouraged, a day where lots of women have headaches because they do not have the "perfect" dress / hat to go to the race course.











An annual affair, this horse race stops the nation in the sense that most people, even though they are at work, will be tuning in to the race on the TV / radio / internet and praying hard that they will get to shout "YES!" at the end of the race.

After weeks of preparation and training, the race that decides the fate of millions of punters ended in less than 5 minutes.

There was a "SWEEPS" going on in the office and I invested $3. "The One Up There" gave me Ice Chariot and Maybe Better.

5 of us decided not to join the crowd and the bar downstairs, so we headed off to the conference room with our lunches and turned the TV on. Once the horses were in position and the gun fired, we stopped eating and was soon on the edge of our seats, each urging our horses to make it first to the finish line.















Delta Blues from Japan, right, ridden by Japanese jockey Yasunari Iwata wins the Melbourne Cup horse race narrowly defeating stablemate Pop Rock, front, ridden by Australian jockey Damien Oliver at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Australia, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006.














It was a very close race. Delta Blues won literrally, by a nose.















My horse, Maybe Better, came in third! And I won $4! haha... We were joking that they should rename the horse "Certainly Better" next year as it had won the third placing this year. And when it clinches the second place next year, the name should be "Definitely Better", and lastly when it won the prestigeous Melbourne Cup (with the prize money of AU$5mio), its name would be "The Best".















All in all, the race was exciting, interesting and certainly captivating. Fortunately it's an annual affair. Otherwise, the Aussies would be gambling all their assets away on the horses back!

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie.... Oi! Oi! Oi!

9 Nov 2006, Thursday - A day a new citizen is born.

D's a new Australian citizen and we were invited to witness the "birth". The ceremony took place at Brisbane's City Hall in the city at 7.30pm. There were more than 500 "births" that night.

People from 63 countries decided to turn local that night, one of which were a family from Nigeria.






A band was playing along to the song of "We are Australians", sung by 3 other and 1 playing a didgeridoo. Then we had to welcome the "Official Party" which was lead by the Brisbane Mayor - Campbell Newmann. Speeches of how Australia welcomes the new citizens and assurances of equality regardless of race, colour, religion and age follows.


The Lord Mayor in his frock.









To prove the Australia is a truly culturally diversified country who embraces all cultures, they've got the bagpipers to come and "blow their horns".












Last but not least, the 'swearing in' of the new "locals" followed by the national anthem of Australia.

The National Anthem on the BIG screen for the convenience of the new citizens, the existing citizens, potential citizens as well as well wishers, family & friends.





The whole ceremony took less than an hour. Though there were no 'new citizens' party thrown by the Mayor, we proceeded to have dinner at Cyber in Fortitude Valley to celebrate the occasion.












Congratulations D!

Choo choo.... Chugga chugga chugga chugga.....

29 Oct 2006, Sunday - All aboard!!!! Once again the Daw Power Family + W + R + ML are out again on a trip together. This time we left our car behind and travelled in style.... We took the steam train to Ipswich!












It's a real steam train, imported from the US during the Second World War. The AC 16 221A officially entered traffic on 9 July 1943 after undergoing many modifications and changes. It written off the books in 1968 and was subsequently placed in the Redbank Museum in 1969. However, in 1999, the QR Heritage Rollingstock Maintenance team restored AC16 221A afterwhich the steam train return to operation on 21 May 2003.

We've also been informed that it takes 4 hours to "heat" the steam train up before it can move off from the station. So for us to take the train and leave from Roma St station at 9.30am, the staff would have come in at 5a.m to get the train ready! Also, it takes 800 shovels of coal just for the 45 minutes ride to Ipswich Rail Museum! Talk about back breaking work!

We were allocated to Car B1 Seats 1 - 7, we have one whole cabin to ourselves!!






























And it's the real thing, complete with antique emergency brakses, fans, lamps, seats etc etc


And the penalty for misuse of the emergency brake is...... AU$10.... hahahah....





We toured the whole length of the train and found that:
1) Cabins have different seating arrangements, some seats face each other, some without cabins, some with seats back to back etc etc
2) It's really noisy taking the train
3) There's really are soot when you travel in a steam train
4) We are the only "overaged kids" (because all the other passengers are parents with young children....)












When we got there, we were greeted by......


Bob the Builder~!






Man... the kids went absolutely crazy over this guy.... and they were willing to wait in queue patiently to take a picture with him!




There are also Legos and a sand pit!




What's there for big kids like us?












There're also model trains... mind you, these can only be played by big kids with big pockets. Each item, even the smallest (e.g. trees can cost more than 10 bucks each!)





















Intricate work, steady hands, attention to details, sufficient funding is a must if you want to have this as your new hobby...















You can even do it with LEGO ...







There were two tours there... the Blacksmith tour and the Steam shop tour.

First stop, the Blacksmith Tour. Another back breaking job. Makes us appreciate these people for and thankful that we now have the necessary technology to ease the work.












Imagine having to be surrounded by metals and fierce fire, not to mention the 2 tonne pounder... They produce their own tools, nails and rails. The Blacksmith shop used to have 300+ workers but has since been downsized to a mere 65.





This fellow was made by Blacksmith staff from materials made from scratch and he has been hanging there for the last 14 years!!!









BIG workshops to accommodate BIG tools and BIG components, not to mention BIG machines...





Next, Steam Shop Tour... Here, it was explained how the steam engines work.... They've disected the "heart" of the engine and colour coded it for visualisation...

The engine is filled with water, which is surrounded by pipes heated up by coals, which ten produces steam which goes through a pressured pipe, "fueling" the engine, chugging trains along its track.
















Somebody was very pissed off with the constant misplace of tools, hence the Rules of Tool Box was established.
1) Ask before borrowing
2) Return of borrowed tools
3) Non-compliance = Loss of LIMBS!!!












Not only do they have Bob the Builder, they also have life sized Thomas the Tank Engine as well as his friend, Percy!

The triangle shaped rails in front of the engine is called the "Cow Pick"... Why? Because in the past, stray cows that wandered off or had used up their time on earth and decided to die on the track gets 'picked" up by the train for a free ride.




And soon, we could no longer ignore our growling stomachs but to break away from the museum and make a run for the cafe...











What?! No fried chicken???!!!


















After lunch, we still had some time left to take some photos, before we leave for Brisbane on a chartered coach at 2.30pm.