Of Winds, Rain and Crazy Weather

I can't believe it's already August. Where did all the time fly to?
Only 4 more months and we will be welcoming in the new year!

Lately, I've been finding it very difficult to stop and spend time appreciating the things around me. I use to do that a lot but lately, I rush everywhere and everything is just a routine to me. Sleep, Eat, Work and repeat. I really hate it a lot but I guess that's what work does to you.

I've been really busy at work lately. A few of my colleagues took leave to go holidaying and then this huge tender application decided to come! My balance between my work and my personal life has recently been messed up hence you'll realise I've been missing from a lot of my social media channels lately. I go home and all I think about is this application, I really want down time but I really cannot afford to mess this up! The application is so massive that it can make or break our organisation (not even kidding!) and all responsibility has been placed on my shoulders. Now you know why I've been freaking out?

Also lately, Melbourne's weather has been so crazy! Winds yesterday reached a maximum of 130km/h in some areas. Trees and power lines have been falling everywhere and damaging cars. Even my half full wheelie bin flipped and pour all our rubbish bags all over my driveway #fml. It feels like we're in the middle of some sort of epic storm that has being bringing in a lot of rain - the constant heavy downpour type of rain that makes you want to remain indoors (or better yet, in bed with a hot chocolate)

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December Update

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of posts lately (again). I found it hard to balance my time with a very busy month last month. Everything happened in November, I got the flu, had two groups of relatives plus one group from my bf’s side visit us, work got busy and amongst all that, I’ve been organising my 6 week holiday to Asia!

Omg, excited!

As we enter into December, I am getting more and more excited about my trip. Partly, to get away from Melbourne’s horrible wet weather (Not even close to summer weather) and partly because I miss my family, very much!

I think this picture from google best describes Melbourne’s weather. Hot one day and raining and miserably wet the next.

 

This year, I decided to spoil myself and take a longer break. I felt I needed it with everything becoming hectic at work with this new and extremely high scaled project we took on board.

So far, on my itinerary, I’ll be visiting Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong! *cue excited squeals*

Time to begin my countdown – Only 18 days left….

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National Rhododendron Gardens

Sorry, for the lack of post recently, I’ve been so busy lately with guest (cousins and their families) visiting from Malaysia. We’ve had two groups in the last month; one group after another. It’s been very tiring but enjoyable.

My cousins came with their kids this time around, the kids are so active. It’s been a while since I’ve been around hyperactive kids! Don’t get me wrong, they’re really well behaved but just super excited to in another country – they’re little balls of energy; constantly!

Before their visit, Chris (bf) had his aunt and uncle from Singapore visiting (it’s been a busy, busy month for us both!). We took them to the National Rhododendron Gardens to relax. We caught a rare, warm weekend to enjoy the limited sunshine there. (Melbourne’s weather has gone haywire lately. One day in the 30s and the next is raining cats and dogs!)

The Rhododendron Gardens are located in the Dandenong Mountains and are host to brilliantly coloured blooms of rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias, cherries and daffodils. Inside is really big and if you walk it all, you’re bound to have an excellent workout.

Chris and I went there a few months back, it was a lot nicer then because the weather was consistently warm and the plants were in full bloom, we also caught a glance of the lyrebirds that run around there.

This time around, we spent less time there, and only walked a little but were still able to take in our gorgeous surroundings – and cool down with an icy pole later.

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Great Chefs at Angliss | Tony Twitchett of Taxi Dining Room

I’ve been very busy lately since I have family visiting me from overseas. Trying to juggle keeping them entertained with work is difficult and added to that, my boyf (Chris) has his aunt and uncle visiting as well!

It’s been a busy month and will continue to be a busy month when another group come to visit next Thursday but it’s always lovely to see my cousins after such a long time.

I recently had 5 days off work due to the Melbourne cup public holiday (actually I took Friday off). On Friday, Chris and I went with his mum, her friends and his aunt and uncle to William Angliss for lunch. My brother and his girlf were on another table (Sorry to crash your date hehe)

William Angliss is a school specialising in culinary and hospitality. For their final year student chefs, they have a special restaurant – Angliss restaurant where they host various events. Occasionally, they’ll have themed buffets cooked by the students and attended to by their hospitality students. Everything is presented like an actual restaurant; it even has a bar connected. Wasn’t a fan of the buffet last time we went, everything seemed a little overcooked.

On Friday, they had their last Great Chefs at Angliss Program. This program attracts many big names in the cooking world (all of whom have their own famous restaurant in Melbourne) and gets their top chefs to lead and teach the students how to cook their specialty dishes. Lunch has 3 courses with wines for each course and dinner is 4 courses with wines to accompany. I was so excited!

We booked for the Friday lunch session – the head chef was Tony Twitchett from the famous Taxi restaurant in Melbourne’s Federation Square and wines sponsored from Tahbilk winery.

We began with a fresh bun with butter, the bun was so well made and very fresh. The outside was a little crispy and the inside was super soft. I love fresh bread! 

This was then followed with our entrée, Smoked brook trout, horseradish cream, capers and salmon roe. Omgoodness, this was delicious! I’m usually not a fan of fish but I literally ate everything off the plate! It was that good. This course was paired with a Rosanne-Marsanne-Viognier, which is a white wine and our favourite wine for the afternoon.

The staffs there were so well trained, so soon as something is empty, they’ll take it away or fill it up for you. We also ordered a lemon lime bitters because Chris had to drive that day and wasn’t allowed to drink too much. The great thing about this place is that all drinks are included in the $50pp cost. So cheap!

The main was a crispy Szechuan duck, pumpkin daikon salad and 3 spice caramel sauce paired with a Grenache-Shiraz-Mourvedre red wine. The duck was melt-in-your-mouth delicious, it was really well cooked and the sauce was divine! The pumpkin salad added a good touch to it and helped to cleanse your palette so the sauce is not too overwhelming. Chris said this dish was very well put together.

We were all looking forward to the dessert wine – since the majority of our table likes our wines sweeter and usually dessert wines are sweeter but it let us down. The wine they paired with the dessert was a Tahbilk Chardonnay Pinot Noir which was nothing close to sweet. The dessert however, was not a letdown. We had a Myrtleford buttermilk, champagne rhubarb and strawberry foam. Presentation was beautiful and taste was just as beautiful!

Definitely will come back to Great Chefs at Angliss 2014, Chris and I already have two chefs in mind (Taxi chef – Tony Twitchett been one of them) so when the schedule comes out in February 2014, we’ll be rushing to book those two sessions.

Angliss Restaurant

550 Little Lonsdale Street
Melbourne VIC 3000 

Tony Twitchett’s restaurant:

Taxi Dining Room

Level 1, Transport Hotel, Federation Square/Flinders Walk,

Melbourne VIC 3000

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Kayaking

Following our Chez Drè lunch - read about that here, we went to Studley park to make the most of the nice warm weather and go kayaking. Yay!

Personally, I love kayaking,takes me away from my busy lifestyle and let's me relax with nature. Not forgetting that it's also a great workout!! Boy, did my arms hurt afterwards.

As Chris and I have kayaked before, we told Cassy and Ethan to come with shorts and sandals as there's a high probability that they'll get a little wet from the splash back when you move your oars. We all got changed, slapped our sunscreen on and booked 2 two-seater kayaks for 1 hour, put our life jackets on then off we went!

 Our plan was to go 35 mins one way and 25 mins back (since coming back is a lot easier once you're familiar with the technique) but that was not the case with Cassy and Ethan. The both of them kept circling around and the two were so brave that they started rocking the kayak to get it to move. Thankfully they did not capsize!

They got a little better after the crash course from Chris and I but in the end, we thought we should start heading back earlier since they might meet so trouble on the way back to the boathouse.

Chris and I were so far ahead of them that we lost sight of them so we decided to get out at the one hour mark (so we can get our deposit back).

Afterwards, we got milo ice cream to re-energise then went for dinner and movies. We watched 'Gravity'. Lucky me got a buy 1 get 1 free voucher on my movie card. Yay! We enjoyed the movie and company a lot.

Studley Park Boathouse

1 Boathouse Road, 

Kew, 3101,

Victoria, Australia

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Wetlands

So happy that the weather is starting to warm up. Melbourne's weather has been crazy this August. According to the bureaus, it was the wettest August since 1991. It wouldn't be Melbourne if it didn't include a few warmer days in the mix. If you're a Melbournian or know anything minute about Melbourne, you would probably know that we have a 4 season in 1 day policy, which in my opinion - sucks! It makes it so hard to dress and even more difficult to plan road trips away. 

Because August was a really disgusting wet month, when we hit a slightly warmer day, we wanted to take advantage of it. We walked to the wetlands near my place to feed the ducks. It such a calming, quiet place that I love to frequent in the warmer weather. As you can tell from the above pics, Spring is very close!

Feeding ducks wouldn't be complete without the swarm of seagulls -argh! They're super cunning and really fast, I think about 4/5th of our bread was eaten up by them. I was quite annoyed at them so in my bad mood, I mentioned to Chris that I heard from friends that if you feed seagulls panadol, their stomachs will explode - fun fact for the day. (well, not exactly that fun if it's true and probably not even a fact.)

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From Day to Night

As you probably already know, I love photography. I take pictures for fun, I love that I can have something there to look back on my past memories.

I love to photograph scenery although I do occasionally photograph people, food etc. One aspect that always amazes me is what different lighting can do to your final picture hence I love waking up early to capture sunrises and taking pictures of the same view by day and by night.

Here are some day to night pictures I've taken and to this day remain my favourite!

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The Melbourne Story

Chris recently had his RDO (rostered day off) and because we were still in holiday mode from our weekend away. I decided to join him on another relaxing day off work. 

We both love exploring Melbourne city but are always short on time so this was the perfect chance for us to get out and stare in awe at unique architecture, eat good food and visit Melbourne's little secrets.

My best friend. My Lover x

 We walked all the way to Melbourne Museum and spent almost 4 hours inside! It's surprisingly interesting. There's a lot to learn and a lot to see.

This was so fascinating. This is the nest of the tree ants. 

By the time we finished with the museum, it was already way past lunch time and we were starving so we went to visit an Italian restaurant nearby. They just so happened to be having special meal sets that day so we scored a really satisfying meal for a cheap price! :)

Walked again along Southbank to enjoy the view and the sunset - damn good exercise that day, so much walking! 

Such an amazing view. Beautiful way to end my day x

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