I miss Cooper!

House seems awfully quiet without the little rascal bouncing off the walls. *Quiet sniff*

Work Tomorrow.

So I'm officially starting work tomorrow. Flying out to Sydney early morning and will be there for 2 weeks. Cooper will be left at a friend's place but she's got 2 other dogs so I don't think he'll miss us much. I'll be missing him heaps though.

Also I have to apply for an Australian visa, which I did but apparently my visa is one of those that needs to be approved by the Australia Visa Office, so I have to check back this evening (12 hours later). If I don't get the visa approved (why won't they approve it anyway?!), then I'm staying in Auckland. (Yay! Heh! But I'll probably get yelled at at work. Not yay.)

I'll update the post this evening on my visa application...

Update 8:11pm - My visa has been approved! Phew! I'm all packed and will be off to Sydney tommorrow. I'm quite psyched up about it now.

Crazy 3 Weeks.

This is our schedule for the next 3 weeks or so. It's crazy and we're trying to move things around so that we can spend our weekends today in the same country.

24 Jul (Thur) - Stephen flying to Wellington in the AM and Christchurch in the PM.
25 Jul (Fri) - Stephen flying back to Auckland in the PM (Yay!)

Weekend of 26 Jul is ours in Auckland!

27 Jul (Sun) - Drop Cooper off with a friend for 2 weeks while we travel.
28 Jul (Mon) - I fly off to Sydney in the AM and will be there for 2 weeks til 8 Aug.
30 Jul (Wed) - Stephen off to Melbourne til 1 Aug.
1 Aug (Fri) - Stephen flies in to Sydney to meet me and we'll spend the weekend in Sydney. Yay!

Weekend of 2 Aug is ours in Sydney!

(Update 27th Jul - Scrap weekend in Sydney. Mr Raja probably has to go in to work that weekend. *sulk*)

3 Aug (Sun) - Stephen flies back to Auckland.
8 Aug (Fri) - I fly back to Auckland.

Weekend of 9 Aug is ours in Auckland!

11 Aug (Mon) - Stephen flies out to HK til 13 Aug.
13 Aug (Wed) - Stephen climbs onto the plane for the 14-hour flight back to Auckland. (Isn't it madness? How bloody far we are from Asia?)

And thus ends a very hectic 3 weeks. Think poor Stephen will hate the inside of an aircraft after all this is over. Hopefully after this period, we'll both be in Auckland for a few months before any of us has to travel for work again.

P/S: HJ - for your vacation, you can meet Stephen first in Melbourne, then join me in Sydney and follow us back to Auckland if you like. xoxo

When should we go home?

Stephen and I are deciding when we should return home to Singapore for a vacation. Now that I'm gonna start work, my schedule isn't all that flexible and I haven't have that many annual leave days this year. So after much deliberation, here are our options:

1. Last week of October for a week. Looking at 24th Oct to 1st Nov.
2. Christmas week 19th Dec to 3rd Jan.

When we come back will be largely dependent on whether you guys will be coming over at the end of the year for summer. Because if you guys are coming over for summer in Dec, we'll go with option 1 and stay in Auckland for Christmas and head home to Singapore for CNY. Else if no one is coming over for Christmas, we'll be heading back to Singapore.

So let us know if you're coming over in Dec, so we can go ahead and book our tix home. That goes for you Huijie, Cliff, Mom, Dad, PL and family.

Mugshot of Canine Criminal.

All remorseful and giving the wide-eyed i-didn't-do-it-it-wasn't-me look.

Back in the Rat Race.

As many of you know, I've been job hunting for the last month. Days were spent sitting in front of my trusty laptop, sending out resumes after resumes, and going for a string of interviews. Well the search has ended. I was offered a job and after some fruitless negotiation, have gone ahead and accepted the offer. I'm due to start on the 28th of this month.

I have mixed feelings about going back to work. I'm definitely looking forward to being financial independent, meeting new people, learning but then again, there'll be always be the inevitable jerk at work, office politics, the unavoidable Monday blues...

Anyhow, I think I'll do okay. I'll be in Sydney for two weeks for a buisness trip and am hoping to catch up with a couple of friends there, shop around, do some sightseeing. Hope I'll be able to get back into the humdrum of working life again without too much of a shock to my system.

Auckland --> Raglan --> Waitomo

We took a road trip a couple of months back before dreary winter descended upon NZ and we came across some nice waterfalls, lots of farm animals and gorgeous scenery.

We were on our way to Waitomo but made a detour and pulled over at Bridal Veil fall, simply because of its name. There's a nice hiking trail that leads to the falls but unfortunately we didn't see any tragic brides moaning and haunting the trail and were a tad disappointed.


Carried onwards to Raglan beach. This is one of NZ's many surf beaches. What's special about this surf town is that the beaches here have black sand (just like Lembeh Straits in Manado).


We drove towards Waitomo where the area is famous for it's glowworm caves. I couldn't take pictures of the caves nor the glowworms but managed to get nice shots of the area instead. I am constantly amazed at the vast expanse of space in this country. It goes on for as far as the eye can see.


We found this farm with enough animals to put Old Macdonald to shame. That's a pet goat by the way. He even has his own little kennel to sleep in.

There was a bison standing by the fence but no way was I going to go near enough to take a photo. I want to keep all of my limbs.

Perfect Days.

A perfect day for me would be one which I'm surrounded by good books, great company and delicious food, and one where Cooper behaves and not pee on the carpets. Cooper's idea of a perfect day would be peeing on the carpets, running after his rubber ball, annihilating his stuffed toy koala and receiving endless cuddles. So far, the score has been Cooper - 10000001, Huicheng - 0.

In Hibernation.

It's been raining almost every day here for 23 hours a day. On the rare occasion when the sun peeks out from behind the rain clouds, everyone comes running out of their houses to soak in a little bit of vitamin E before the damn rain comes pouring down again. Plus it's so cold. Ignore my previous posts when I said I was cold then. Now I'm really cold. I have the heat on in the house almost throughout the day and even with the heat on, I have on at least 3-4 layers while indoors. (This house is gorgeous and has history. It's got character but unfortunately age as well, so the windows and walls are not exactly well insulated.) I try to stay indoors as much as possible and only venture out to go grocery shopping.

I'm effectively in hibernation, leaving my den only to forage for food. And even then, it's a quick trip out and back indoors again. No more walks along the beach, no more exploring the city, no more road trips.

I just wanna stay home and stay warm!

Due to repeated demands for more photos of the latest addition to the family, I attempted to take more pictures of Cooper. He however just couldn't keep still long enough and all I got were these psycho shots.

Finally after zooming around the house and creating total havoc for 15 mins, he finally settled down. Here's a decent shot of him looking right at the camera. Attaboy!

Notice the 4 dots over his left eye, they look like some sort of star constellation.

Like owner like pup.

Cooper tends to grumble and mutter to himself whenever he's tired or when he's disturbed from his nap. He'll be all groggy and won't even bother lifting up his head but he'll somehow muster up enough energy to chatter (yes he chatters. like a monkey.) grumpily at whoever the culprit is before slumping back into sleep. He's one cranky pup when he's tired.

What's that they say about puppies taking after their owners?!