First Christmas in Brissy

This is my first Christmas in Brisbane ever since I moved here. For the past 3 years, hubby flew to Singapore to spend Christmas. (I wasn't the reason in the 1st year but from there, it became the reason for the 2 years after.)

Christmas in Brissy is a lot more quiet as compared with Singapore. To me, Christmas mood in Singapore is heaps of shopping, Orchard Road lights (even though sometimes they're not that pretty) and many gatherings amongst friends and family. In Brissy, there is also lots of shopping (overcrowded shopping centres pre and post Christmas shopping) but not as packed as those in SG, pretty Christmas lighting concentrating at people's homes and the gatherings. The stark difference is, many shops and eating places are closed on Christmas (we had to drive around to look for places that are opened to have lunch after Christmas service). It also appeared that everyone has disappeared - the streets are really really quiet, you don't see many people and many cars. But the fact is that people spent Christmas either overseas or are gathered in people's homes. Christmas is a family event.

Hubby and I came back from SG just 9 days before Christmas... and the thought of all the gatherings, food preparation, etc and trying to get back to our routined life, etc, made me tired. It was one of those "you need a holiday to recover from a holiday". I am thankful for the past week to rest up and relax after Christmas and before I begin work in the new year... I am thankful that at the end, we had fun with cooking up a storm(s) and many great times of catching up with family and friends.

Believe it or not, never in my life had I put up a Christmas tree. I thought it was cumbersome and time consuming. But now that I have my own place and space with hubby, I thought it would be nice to have a Christmas tree in the house. In an attempt to not spend too much money and not clutter our small townhouse, I decided to make the following tree after we came back from our holiday!

Christmas tree for under $4 with tinsels and stars. How easy is that? :)

Next up, we decided to give a go at making turkey since we learnt it during our recent Singapore trip. Hubby did most of the preparation and cooking on Christmas eve since I was working in the morning that day. But for 5.5 hours of oven baking, we would baste the turkey together every 30 minutes. The result - very yummy and tender turkey (even though it wasn't evenly browned) and heaps of stuffing! I also made our whole cranberry sauce with that same recipe. Made a total of 1.7kg of frozen cranberries over 2 lots and gave most of them away as Christmas gifts :)

Bottled cranberry sauce

This turkey may not look very glam but it really tasted yum!

Extra stuffing that went baking in the oven in 2 loaf pans

Christmas log cake. I made 3 of such cake for 3 different occasions. It was easy. Just buy chocolate swiss roll, make the icing and spread over the roll. Top it up with Christmas decor.

Out of all the Christmas gifts that we received, 2 of which stood out:

Brandied fruit cake baked by SIL W. This was really delicious and not those usually disgustingly sweet fruit cakes

Waffle maker given by BIL D and SIL G

G remembered that hubby love waffles and I love to make them but we didn't find a good reason to buy a maker. When she saw it, she thought it would make a great gift for us... and it is true! I've since made some for family NY gathering, church's NY picnic and will be making them for a friend's son's 2nd birthday party. And I've also plans for at least one waffle party, where people can come make their own sweet or savoury waffles. What a good ministry tool it can be! Don't blame me when you are eating too much waffles from some gatherings that I go to too... I have to make this machine make its worth!

Anyway, to sum up about Christmas, I do miss some bits of Singapore's Christmas but at the same time, I enjoy the quietness and rest over this period that hubby and I had. Of course the next best thing was Boxing Day shopping sales! :p

Flight Back on Air Asia

Just arrive back to Brisbane early this morning. Hubby and I took an overnight plane from SG via KL. Our journey to SG 2 weeks ago was fairly okay. However the return leg was not fantastic...

1) We had to pay for excess baggage. When we booked the KL-GC leg, we could select and pay for the baggage that we want to bring across. We booked for 25kg each worth of baggage, knowing that we will have many things to bring back. The KL-SG leg, however could only allow 15kg of baggage max and you cannot purchase more baggage except to pay for the excess baggage of S$7.50 per kg. As we packed 50kg worth of baggage and turn up to check in at SG airport, we were told that we have to pay for excess. In the end, we decide not bring over a box of belongings but will arrange for it to be sent over another time at S$4+ per kg.

2) At the KL LCCT (low cost carrier terminal), we waited ages at the immigration to get our passports stamped. After we finally went through the gates, we were one of the last few to obtain our baggages at the conveyer belt. At the belt, we realised that our largest suitcase was held up somewhere along the belt. 1-2 of the other suitcases have caused the others to get stuck along the moving belt. 1 guy (someone looking for his suitcase) attempted to resolve the stuck suitcases but couldn't do it. Hubby then went in to help. He even went behind the walls and disappeared into the back to try to sort out the stuck suitcases. During all this time, non of the ground airport crew helpe nor seemed to realise the problem. I informed the ground crew guy at the Lost and Found counter just beside our belt. He then came out to have a look but by then hubby has just resolved the problem. The suitcases then all got rolled out and hubby came out along on the conveyor belt too, only to realised that he cut his finger in the process. I can't believe that we had to sort out the conveyor belt problem ourselves and without any ground crew's help!

3) When we had to check in for our KL-GC flight, we took such a long time to find our counter... It was because there was no where that tells us which counter number we should check in. We finally found it when one of the security man asked us where we were flying to. (We almost got past this security guy without scanning our baggages... he was sleeping on his job and he didn't even realised I simply just walked past!)

4) Finally we were late for boarding. Our names got called up. After all the saga above, we were hungry and went for a bite before we boarded. When we presented our passport and boarding pass to board, the guy there scanned through my passport carefully looking at my photo, information, my Aussie visa and even took out his UV light to look through my passport. After wasting those time, we had to then walk 5 minutes on the tarmac to get onto our plane.

After all that, I still would like to praise Air Asia for their meals on board. The quality of the international and local food was really not too bad for a budget travel. Well, another thing that I was happy about was to be able to get a bottle of Cointreau liquor at GC airport for only A$29! The listed price was A$39 but I'm not sure why the price came down. Hmm, the Cointreau will come in handy when we make our turkey this Christmas... :)

Turkey Cooking Class

When I was in secondary school, my classmates and I would hear of Violet Oon shepherd's pie but I never got to eat it. It was expensive then... Yesterday with thanks to MC, hubby and I went along with her to VO's cooking class where we learnt how to make our own Christmas turkey, sauce, gravy, veggies and potatoes. Because of MC's friendship with VO, we could be there to watch, learn and sample at no costs. The process seemed complicated and lots of preparation and cutting work. It takes quite a lot of time to cut up and prepare the ingredients and it also takes a long baking time. But I think it is not that difficult to make... (although the cost of the ingredients are not cheap) VO demonstrated how to prepare a turkey, bake it, make gravy, cranberry sauce, secret to roast yummy potatoes, make your own turkey stuffing. We also learnt how a sherry berry truffle was made.


With the 3 hours spent, we picked up quite a number of tips and had fun with VO telling us many stories as she demonstrated. Contrary to my preconceived ideas, VO has no airs. She is nice, warm, motherly lady. Hubby and I are running on a tight schedule, otherwise we may join her and a few others to make 6-8 turkeys to feed 100+ old folks at a home next weekend.

After all the learning, I only just began to appreciate the turkey that MC made for us last Christmas when she first learnt how to make a turkey from VO. Hubby and I hope to try to make it some time back in Brissy...?!?

My First Cherry Tomato

The 3 cherry tomato plants in my backyard are doing pretty well this year... Just before I left for Singapore, some tomatoes just began to start turning red. I was so excited that I thought to bring some to Singapore for my parents.

My mum said that they are sweet! Yum! Praise God for the harvest!

Burden for our lost families

Read my SIL's email about how her in-laws (her in-laws and BIL's family were visiting from Singapore) did not wanna attend church service with them yesterday and my BIL was feeling discouraged. I fully understood his feelings... My family too, did not wanna come church with me when they were in Brissy last year.

During the church service, as we were singing songs of praise to our God and Saviour, I thought of my unsaved parents and siblings and also the unsaved parents and siblings of my other BIL (hubby's 2 sisters both married Singaporeans too) and how we all have gotten each other to pray for each one of us as we share the gospel with our Singapore families... I praise and thank God that He is our God and one who loves us. If we love our families and want them to be saved, I know that God desires that more than us... and God is also the Sovereign One in control of all our lives. I am thankful that I was reminded through the songs of the attributes of God. If we are burdened for the salvation of our families because we love them, how much more does God feel for them? Yet at the same time, I only can pray for God to be merciful and to help us trust that in His good time and will, they will come to the knowledge of His saving grace.

I wonder how 'coincident' it is for my in-laws to have Singaporean in-laws. Yet I am also thankful for the persevering faith of my hubby, parents-in-law, my sibling-in-laws and that through their witness and prayer, we have the opportunity to be Christ-like to our extended family which is our in-laws' family (i.e. both my Singaporean BILs' families). One by one, they visit Brissy to spend time with my BILs and this also give us opportunity to be Christ's witnesss. It is really nice, I thought, that eg. all my in-laws (parents and siblings) can minister to my parents and siblings when they come to Brissy to visit. I feel so privileged to belong to a Christian family that I never had (even though I have my Christian 'family' in church). Thank God for that.

Now, hubby and I are on our way back to Singapore... and we are mindful of this 'mission'. We seemed like missionaries, going overseas (out of Australia) where we now reside) to share the gospel. Except that we have a specific target group – my parents and siblings. We only can pray that God will work through us to share His love and that they will begin to know and understand who Jesus is and what He has done for all of us. I have to trust that God also love my folks and even more than I do...

Air Asia flight

Here I am in KL LCC terminal, waiting to board my plane to Singapore. Hubby and I decided to try out taking Air Asia from Gold Coast to KL and then to SG. This gave us savings of 50% of the normal price we would have paid for a direct flight on an international flight.

What kept me awake during the 2 hours at KL LCC terminal

At the GC airport, I felt like I was in Malaysia already – the Malaysian staff at Air Asia, duty free shopping and many Malay Malaysians and Chinese who seemed to be taking the same flight as us. There were few Aussie Caucasians on the flight. It took us 8 hours and 20 minutes from GC to KL (which was a bit long, we thought). The boeing seemed like an old (possibly MAS) air plane, even though it was supposed to be a no-frills flight. The seats were old, numbering of our seats was old, our overhead lights didn't work, there was no curtains for the crew gallery (although a curtain track was visible), there were completely no tv screens, the engine sounds were really loud and sounding abormal when the plane was taking off (we felt a bit dodgy about it...). Well you definitely know that it is an old plane. The plane that I took 10 years ago was definitely newer than this. We prayed as the plane took off... Thank God that we landed safely :) We now have to wait another 4+ hours for our next flight to SG.

Pre-ordered meals on board the flight. Roast chicken an potatoes (international meal) and mutton rendang (asian meal). They were both yummy! (to my pleasant surprise)

2 things that I have noticed so far: (1) toilets in MY and AUS (at least at the airports) are remarkably different. One is clean and the other is really quite dirty. You go figure out which is which... (2) In AUS, people are generally more polite and aware of people around them, being careful not to be selfish and are generous and giving. The very moment I arrived at GC airport with more Malaysians (possibly Singaporeans too), I felt people pushing and rushing ahead of me, with their bags poking me and wanting to get ahead. The 'kia su' (afraid to lose out) syndrome is showing up. I suppose this also reflects the pace of life – AUS being slower and relaxed, while Singapore and Malaysia being faster, tense and rushing around. I know I am the latter (having grown up in Singapore), but I know that having lived in AUS for some time, I am now slower. Having said that, I am still probably faster than the typical Australian. To them, I am probably the 'kia su' one.

Bored, sleepy and tired hubby at MacDonald's

Let's see if my friends and family could tell if I had changed in any way. I am certain that I still have the singlish side of me. I was surprised when a friend's brother in Sydney commented that I don't have a strong singlish accent! Hmm....