Trademememe.

I'm hooked on Trademe!

Trademe is an online auction site where Kiwis buy and sell stuff. You can buy or sell ANYTHING! From dogs to clothes to properties. Obviously I've doing all the buying! Ha! I've bought erm, 1 large doggy crate for Cooper, 1 baby gate to restrict Cooper's access to certain parts of the house, 1 dog clippers. I am bidding for a set of bath and face towels, and matching bath mates, a doggy bed, an antique bakelite wall-mount telephone which is primo cool if I get it. I am such a trademe addict!

Moo goes the puppy.

Introducing *drum roll please*.... Cooper! (Yup. I shamelessly named my dog after my car.) He's the latest addition to the household. The photos aren't great because I can't get the little rascal to hold still for more than 2 seconds to get a decent picture. He's dottier and nuttier than Nugget, if that's even possible. If we ever put the two of them together, they'll literally tear the house apart.

He really looks like a miniature cow, doesn't he?

Monkey See Monkey Do.

He drew quite a crowd posing like Mister Statue there. ;)

Pup mania.

Feeling rather low lately because I haven't been able to get a job. Auckland has a pretty small finance market, plus the credit crunch really is not helping matters. Also the skills and experience with Bloomberg is so specialised that it doesn't apply to most jobs. So my mood has been down, down, down.... :(

... well until I saw this ad online about puppies for sale. I miss having a shadow (NUGGET)! So... I've made an appointment to view a litter of Dalmatian puppies tomorrow. The breeder sounds reputable, she's listed with NZKC, she's helpful with information etc etc. First time this week that things are looking up!

Puppy power!

More pics on the Mount.

Received more pics from Chingling fr our roadtrip to Mount Maunganui.




At a curio shop at one of our pitstops where we stretched our legs.

Where are my eyes? They disappear when I smile...

... or when i stick my tongue out!

Take the Sex and the City poll.

Just watched Sex and the City the movie yesterday. Chick flick or not, it's so goooood! S says that I remind him of Miranda cuz I'm such a cynic. Yucks. I don't like Miranda. I think he's wrong! Pfft.

Take the Sex and the City poll. It's on left of the page, below the picture of handsome Nugget. Click on 1 of the 4 girls that you think you are most like, character-wise.

In Lord of the Rings country...

It's been 2 and a half months since I moved to Auckland. To be honest, before I came here, I knew next to nothing about NZ, except for the fact that it's the Lord of the Rings country. I only hear what people have been telling me; that the scenery is gorgeous, there are more sheep than people, that their national bird, fruit and people are called the same thing - Kiwi, that it's a boring country and that everyone is jumping ship and moving to Australia.

Well to set the record straight; yes the scenery is amazing. It makes amateur photographers (like me) look good. Every other photo is a postcard-perfect shot of the natural landscape of NZ. The Kiwis claim that God made NZ last, that's why he had the time and practice to make it so perfect. And yes, there definitely are more sheep and cows than people. The hills are dotted with cattle! The population (talking about humans now) of NZ is 4 million. That's less than the population in Singapore plus we have only about 1/1000th of the land. There is so much space in this country. We were just laughing about it the other day when we were on one of our roadtrips and came across this huge expanse of land that went on for miles and miles. In Singapore, some developer would have already snapped up the land and started contructing high-rise condos or office buildings (whichever will return a larger profit). People here take their space for granted.

I wonder why people are abandoning NZ and moving to Aus. Having lived in both countries, I would pick NZ over Aus any day. There are a ton of things to do here if you're into sports and nature. The people are warm and friendly. The waiters and shop assistants seem to genuinely want to know how your day has been. It's easy to strike up a conversation with a stranger on the street.

Just in case you think that I just found paradise on earth, well close, but not quite. NZ might as well be on another planet considering how far it is from everywhere else. 10 hours from Singapore and a gazillion hours from Europe and the rest of the world. Also they're quite behind on the technology front. They still rent VHS here at their video rental stores! How funny right?! Plus wireless internet is like such a new thing here! Ha! Cute! It is generally more expensive living here in NZ and crime rates here are pretty high but I guess coming from Singapore, almost everywhere else is high as compared to Singapore. Just the other day, a girlfriend of mine got robbed in broad daylight and my neighbour's car got broken into.

Sitting in front of the fireplace with the fire going, typing out this entry. It has been, generally, a good 2 and a half months, minus being homesick and out of a job. Winter isn't all that bad here. It's cold but tolerable. Not Stockholm-freeze-your-n*ts-off kinda cold. Plus summer here is glorious and I just can't wait to go sailing!

Under the weather.

feeling rather lousy today. have the mother of all headaches plus i'm feeling awfully grouchy. not in the mood for anything. not even going to the library. drove down to the beach, felt so horrible so i came back home again. gonna just stay home today and concentrate on getting well.

to top it off, it's our first wedding anniversary today. absolute worst day to be feeling sick.

bugger. :(

Duan Wu Jie

Today is Duan Wu Jie or simply known by many Singaporeans as "Dumpling Festival". The day is to commmorate the Chinese poet and patriot, Qu Yuan and is celebrated by eating dumplings and taking part in dragon boat races.

To be honest, I didn't even realise that today is Dumpling Festival until one of the gorgeous Kweks wrote to remind me. I haven't found a shop in Auckland that sells rice dumplings yet. Oooohhh I miss nonya zhang! I remember that Grandma used to make and cook these rice dumplings, and I used to help out. Her rice dumplings were delicious! I also remember that there's a technique to tying up the dumplings else they fall apart when you lower them into the pot of hot water. My dumplings never really made it past the boiling pot of water cuz I just couldn't tie them up tight enough. They end up strewn all over the bottom of the pot.

Sigh.

I miss home!

Anonymous who???

Can all the champions who have signed on as "Anonymous" and left comments on my blog please identify yourselves. There are at least 5 different "Anonymous" individuals out there and I just know it's all from within the family. Guess it runs in the family eh?! Can all the Chens and Kweks and Lows please identify yourselves?

Muchas gracias! =)

Cinderella's sisters.

Found some pics of my sisters in my camera, all dressed up.

p/s: They also seemed to have developed some kinda fetish for one of Santa's reindeers.

This will go down in history...

... as one of the dumbest moments in my life!

I stepped out of the house this morning to hang up the washing on the deck. It was windy outside so I latched the door on the outside to keep the glass door from slamming shut for fear of cracking the glass.

When I tried to open the door again, I realised I was locked out! The main door was locked from the inside, the inside latch of the glass doors to the deck somehow managed to swing shut as well. There I was, standing outside in a thin t-shirt and shorts in 13 degrees weather, with no keys nor jacket nor my cellphone on me. What's more, Stephen's away on a business trip and won't be back til Friday evening. I must have gone through all expletives known to Man, at the same time kicking myself for being such a bloody idiot!

Trotted over to the neighbour's and activated Plan I: tried calling Stephen. Of course he didn't pick up. Brilliant. Plan II: Thought I'll try to unscrew the latch from the outside. I mean it looked so easy when they do it in the movies. That obviously didn't work. Crap. Plan III: Called the property manager but he was short-handed this week because one of his staff is away on bereavement leave. He somehow managed to get the maintenance guy and he agreed to come over with the keys. Thing is, he was on the other side of the city so I had to wait while he swings by to pick up the key before coming over to let me in. Plan III sounds like it's gonna work. Thank god!

Ended up sitting outside in the freezing cold for two whole hours before Barry the maintenance guy came by to let me into the house. It took me another 20 mins to stop shivering. It's great to be IN the house rather than being OUTside and looking in, separated by all that glass.

Here's the bloody culprit:

By firelight.

With the temperature dropping, I've taken to starting a fire in the fireplace during the nights. I love turning out the lights and just sitting in the glow of the firelight, watching the colors of the flames.

Here's my favourite spot during the nights to stay toasty and warm.

Of course I've had my fair share of mishaps with starting a fire. In the beginning, it took me forever and a day just to get the fire going. I probably went through an entire stack of newspapers. Pfftt. Then I found out that different kinds of wood burn at different rates and some woods burn hotter than others. Now I've gotten pretty good at getting the fire going. Not bad eh? For a sua-ku Singaporean whose idea of an open fire is that from the satay man's open grill!

Mount Maunganui

This weekend is a 3-day weekend as the Queen's birthday falls on Monday. We decided to take a day trip to Mount Maunganui in Tauranga together with Chingling and Marcus. Tauranga is about a 3-hour drive from Auckland. Stephen quit being polite after being at the wheel for an hour and happily handed over the keys to Marcus, who drove most of the way there and back. The rest of us were contented to sit back, relax and play silly games to keep ourselves entertained.

We finally got to Mount Maunganui and instead of braving the mount, somebody (*ahem* I won't state names) was too much of a bum to trek up the mount so we went up the mini mount beside it instead.

Here's Mount Maunganui in the background.

Stephen in his model pose.

And here are the lovers Ching and Marcus.

We were introduced to this Malaysian eatery, Sri Puteri at Panmure for dinner and boy were we excited. They had local delights like nasi lemak, ban mian, koloh mee, hainanese chicken rice etc. Being utterly deprived of decent asian food, Stephen and I went a little overboard and ordered too much food. One more place to add to our growing lists of asian eateries. Yay! Cheers to Ching and Marcus for taking us there.