Happy Year 2009

At the moment, I’m happily having my year-end company break from 25/12/08 - 05/01/09. I didn’t have the time to update as I’m busy shopping, partying, playing my new toys and lots of things. I’ll briefly bring through what I did as there are too many if I go into details.

On the 24th of December, my employer RMR organizes Kris Kringle during morning tea time and provided a sumptuous seafood lunch with all the booze you want for all the employees! So basically that day, I was just hanging around chatting with my colleagues and proudly showing off my 450d. I’ve been in this company in the same team for 18 months already! Amazingly, I managed to pull through for my first job, although I’m not sure when will I bid goodbye~

My current team!

The group that I hang out with most of time during work

Emma & Churany

Two of my favorite neighbors who kept me company! They both talk a lot!

I only stayed for Kris Kringle and went off with Churany to start my booze plan for that day - I actually missed out that seafood lunch! Damn!

On 25th of December, drove to Venus Bay Beach about 3 hours away from Melbourne with a group of friends to celebrate Christmas!

The weather is great and the beach is greater! I took approximately 200 photos for that day, so basically I’m the happy photographer!

This is one of my favorite shot I took! I named it ‘To Paradize’

With my models – Li Li and Li Ling, you know that they are sisters by their name.

We chill out for a while chatting at the beach then went off to dig some fresh pipis. I wasn’t much interested at first until I start digging it, then only I realized there are so many of them - all so fat and big, it just make me happy knowing that I’m so going to eat them later~

Diggers~

After we dug up so much of them, we flew with happiness!

After the beach, we went to a place nearby to BBQ for our lunch!

Of course, not forgetting a turkey for Christmas

Yeah, we didn’t get to BBQ the pipis as eating pipis with sand is the last thing we want. So we left it in a container of sea water for some time so that the pipis clear out most of the sand before we can have a feast on them!

Look at that amount of our work! I know - high cholesterol!

After the long wait for about 6 hours, we finally had them for our dinner in Christine’s place. We were all so hungry, and all the pipis were all so delicious! I think that night I had 50 of them at least~ OMG!

And this will be Pipis Group! They dig, catch, fry, steam and eat the pipis like a pro!!

On 26th of December, I woke up early in the morning again about 8.30am just to go shopping! Of course since it’s Boxing Day – the great sale day!

With Philip, we travel from Westfield Doncaster shopping town then to Chadstone… Shop til we dropped, from morning 9am until 10pm!! Almost dead, this is the longest shopping experience in my life!!

On 27th of December, I broke down and slept for the whole blardy day!

When I’m awake, I just dota my night off!

On the 28th of December, went to city for some photo shooting!

Taken along Swanston Street…

Then went to look for poor Emily who is working to help me do some stuff~ Then to dinner together in St Kilda along Acland Street~

After dinner, went to had the best ice chocolate in Sofitel Melbourne

And more shots~

On the 29th of December, went to KTV and got hammered again~

On the 30th of December, had a great Dim Sum, and then rested at home to recover and get ready for 2009!

On the 31st of December, I’m here to wish everyone a great year 2009!! Best wishes with all your dreams come true!!! May peace break into your house and thieves come to steal your debts. May the pockets of your jeans become a magnet of bills, love stick to your face like Vaseline and laughter assault your lips! May your clothes smell of success, happiness slap you across the face and may tears be that of a joy. And last but not least, may all the problems you had forget your home address!

Welcome 2009!

Melbourne Street Art

Let’s take a walk with Graffiti

Something common in Melbourne but unique to the others is the Street Art. I have no idea about the history of artists in Melbourne, but I’m pretty sure they are good at vandalizing buildings with creative Graffiti! It’s no surprise to find a striking patch of Graffiti when you enter a dark, dirty alley around Melbourne - you’ll find yourself stunned since they are so cool!!

Last year around October, Street Graffiti was legalized in Melbourne as there are too many ‘noobs’ around the city who illegally design vandalize monikers on buildings, alleys, train stations and public toilets with colourful spray. Throughout all these years, the problems got so big that it’ll cost millions of dollars to clean up those vandalized streetscapes. So, the idea was to replace the amateur art pieces with new ‘pro’ graffiti. As in the street culture, it is impolite to deface another artist’s graffiti finished work and somehow it works. Regardless of that culture, I think no one will bear to dirt these masterpieces.

Along an alley is the graffiti of movie Princess Mononoke (Anime Movie made in 1997 by Hayao Miyazaki aka the director of Spirited Away)



Then we monkey around the wall with tree spirits like idiots

Lame with the main character Ashitaka

And find them absolutely creative!

There’s this very cool lane near my work place…

Colorful city covered with gorgeous and vibrant lane ways!

Want to see more? >Click here<

Melbourne - the leader in street art. What say you?

Santa Teachings

Christmas!! Nah not yet, in another one month time~ As for now, people here is getting ready to celebrate for the big event. Actually not really ‘celebrate’, it should be ‘to decorate for the big event’. I’ve heard that Singapore has all the glaring lights hanging up around Orchard Road already… Totally unlike here, not much decoration was done along the streets though. Oh yeah, I nearly forgot! Singapore is famous for ‘ Kia-su’.

Melbourne prefers to decorate in a different way, not too exaggerating, not too stressful for those decorators yet meaningful – I'm talking about the process of how Santa really works.

Anyone believe that Santa Claus exist when they were younger? This li’l fairy tale teaching might be interesting… Everyone know Santa delivers presents but who exactly make those presents?

Christmas College for Elves: If you realized in the picture, there’s only 1 Santa Claus (the fatty jolly Gnome) while the rest of them are Elves. Do you know that presents are made by magical Elves in the Christmas College?

First: They collect wish requests from individuals in the Letters Department, Elves then sort them out and sum up the quantity to produce or whether the request is appropriate as a present or not…

Second: After appropriate decisions are made, toys and gifts are produced by Elves while Santa Claus decides where to store them…

Third: Elves then help out with Santa to put all the toys at the right location in the big storage room…

Forth: When the time of Christmas is near, with the help of Elves again, they dispatch all the wrapped present into the transport department so everything will be in order during the day of delivery~

Fifth: At Christmas Eve!! Everything will be ready for delivery, magical Elves then make flying reindeers that pulls the Gnome’s Sleigh and off he goes to do his job as Santa Claus!!! That’s when everyone get pressies in their Christmas socks~

Hohoho~

Melbourne City Roamers

It’s currently 8˚ out there~ the bread I was having almost freeze, feels like I had bread freshly made-out-of-the fridge… Yeah winter~ bloody winter is coming!! Most of the maple trees outside my house are shedding off and scattered dried leaves covered portions of the road; many ‘Botak’ can be found around the neighbourhood now~ the colours around are fading off slowly… Sleeping under the doona and hibernate is the best choice now!!

This is a late post, as I took too much of my own sweet time extracting and editing some elite take from the 800+ photos I had from my friends who came, so I decided to put them into one post!

For the past few years, I’ve always wanted to take some nice photos around Melbourne City as they have some unique old buildings and special features around but I don’t have the chance as I don’t have a good camera; my old 2.0 mp camera can only shoot crap and it always take too long to load after each shot *not recommended by Edison*~ so I gave it an indefinite holiday while I try to get a new one…

Our first stop is the city and when it comes to city + women, the result is easy~ the guys just have to find their own play toy while the ladies indulge themselves into the shopping Valley; the reason it’s not advisable to do it with them is because they all ask the same universal questions - “how do I look in this? Nice? Not nice? Really Nice? Really not Nice?!!” Okay… Never answer ‘not nice’ since the result is inevitable… the better way is to wait and ask them to chill for a photo session after that…

Long . Ling . Eddie . Venus . Bourke Street


Felephant and Me!

One of the reason I like Melbourne City is partly because of the lively street performers~ they range from lame to interesting performers; yeah, they all do that for a living. Some lame ones try to sing out loud polluting the environment, some do drawings and some even do speeches about God. Although I categorise them as lame, they are still good to have that kind of courage, I remember I made a post on my abandoned blog about an old man holding a gong at the heart of the city just gonging with random rhythm; then a kind Asian girl was praised as a goddess for giving one dollar - I think the old man did it in a nice way and he made her day~ I was giggling away when I heard that, I find her shock expression really funny…

These are some interesting and talented ones...

The gracious slow white – this is the name I gave her because her skilful slow movement on the upper part of her body makes her looks so gentle and genial – she just stands there for few hours! *Respected* Though it’s quite sickening to see her giving flying kisses to everyone and many were into her! Gorgeous?

This is the famous street singer and his name is George Blabla *I forgot* - well all I can say he sings well and he’s Japanese…

Saw that big horn? That’s the horn blower if I’m right… the rhythm created by it is not pleasant to me though but I know you need plenty of hard breathe to keep that thing working~ I’ll probably end up in hospital for more oxygen if I blow that for an hour but they can go on for hours…

And the last performer is the shortest creature in the world… she come from Venus name Venus~ she is a famous poser since she pose a lot in those photos I had! Hoho… Alright she’s my friend~

If this looks familiar to you - yeah I brought them to my favourite place - Cho Gao for my beer… so we chilled in there, chit chat and hang around~

My Johor Gang!

When I first got here, I was brought to Pancake Parlour and told that they have nice pancakes. For the fact that, I’m so Chinese that I seldom have this kind of food – all I did was ‘hmm… it’s nice!’ but in fact, it doesn’t taste special to me from those I bought from supermarkets. Anyway it doesn’t matter whether I know how to appreciate; the trend to introduce nice pancakes still goes on… I was told that Stokers is famous and nicer for its pancakes so we stoke it instead!

I arrived and I couldn’t find the shop! I thought it would be something like the parlour~

Then I was told not to judge by its cover – about pancakes to someone like me? *Hmm* I think I’m more interested in something like this though~

Me and Seng at Pancake Parlour~

Anyway, I like to try new things! It’s not as bad as I said, but the photos look nicer than the real thing~ and I believe they only specialise in pancakes because their drinks suck oh~! So hmm… they have nice pancakes.

Oh yeah, we planned to have cake after pancakes so to celebrate my housemate’s birthday that night but we were told that we are not allowed to have outside cake in there~ so took the cake back and there we are~ Cakie at home!

Once again... Happi Burstday Seng!

Happy times always end faster~ one week just passes like that – one blink and they are back to the airport again… so the next time we get to see each other might be end of the year.

Well… it was great fun having you guys here despite it made me feel like not working everyday… anyway below are some other nice photos…

Random Places . Melbourne...

Around Melbourne City...


The Shop where they make Kandy!

Shoppers Paradize...

Crown Melbourne . The place where Cash turns into Flame~

SpellBox . Pick your card here!!


Random Take . Melbourne

Lots of Love~!