Friends and Church Camp

(Overdue post)

J, M and I made a date some 1.5 years to be back in Singapore this year for church camp. The 3 of us and our spouses reside outside Singapore and we miss church camp. The last time 3 of us (and another M) met together was at my wedding in Brisbane. They flew from where they were in the world then to witness my holy matrimony. Unfortunately, as things pen out, M cannot make the trip back (M, you better start to feel guilty again :p). 

Together with R and MQ, J and I had 2 great nights at church camp having girl chats about our marriages and children in my room. Hubby kindly sacrificed by spending time by himself and walking around the hotel premises late at night (all other husbands were either sleeping (because they are sick) or minding the children). How I really miss precious moments like these where we catch up on the smaller details of our lives, our struggles, laughing and giggling (usually, MQ's ignorance for certain things). Most of all, we spent some time praying for each other. I felt so strongly and prayed that God will protect all our marriages in Christ. Satan loves to destroy marriages and our lives and faith in Jesus. The other 'threat' is how having children will significantly reduce couple time and the building of the marital relationship. I prayed that we will always put our marriages before our children and of course, Christ above all else.

I am looking forward to our next 'date', probably in 2012 where we shall be heading to karaoke to sing oldies :) and of course, more girl time.

R, MQ and I having durian at the largest durian party ever!

With A & J at yum cha (dim sum) until midnight. Looking forward to see you guys in Oz next year!!

Hubby with little J, who, for some reason, loves hubby more than me! Children usually prefers me to hubby :p

(There was a video on facebook of them conversing with each other in baby talk)

Last of all, the now grown up Cha Cha, whom I used to blog a lot about. She is now a fine little lady, no longer the little girl I used to know. She is really a dear... and probably the only child in SG who misses me.

Learning to be A Woman of Purpose

Last Saturday, together with about 200 other women, I attended the Women of Purpose conference. This is an annual women's training event to teach and encourage Christian women with God's Word. This is my 2nd time (the 1st was last year) and I was so glad I went. I left the conference spiritually encouraged, mentally challenged but physically tired.

Claire Smith (wife of Rob Smith, a talented Christian musician and song writer of many good contemporary Christian songs) spoke about the book the Jude in 2 talks in the morning. Tara Thornley (Dean of Women at Moore Theological College)  spoke about discipleship and how we can care for the women in our midst, especially 1-to-1 discipleship in reading the Bible together.

Claire is a very clear and concise speaker as she taught the book of Jude. The book of Jude was presented so thoroughly and clearly, from the history of who is Jude, why did he write this book and his audience. I was reminded of the reason that I should contend for the faith that was once entrusted to the saints, as more and more false teachers are in our midst to distract us from our love and focus on Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. The threat is not far away from us and many times we do not even realise the danger . Hence Jude writes to warn us and get our focus right.

The first thing that stood out for me was a reminder that Jesus is the ONLY Lord and Saviour. He is BOTH our Lord and Saviour. If He is only our saviour, our lives will remain unchanged post-salvation (quote: that is where we sing "Jesus is my boyfriend" type song). If Jesus is only our Lord, we only do good to obey Him but forgetting that we cannot do anything to gain salvation. Salvation is free and unconditional. We do not earn it. It is given with mercy and grace. Hence Jesus has to be both our Lord and Saviour. Does my life reflect this truth which I believe?

Time and history are important to help us press on. Time is not bigger than God. He does not change with time. It is the same Jesus who judged in the past and will judge our future. God does not change like we do. God rules over history (and the present and the future) and things happen for a reason. We must look at history in God's perspective. Everything we do on earth has an eternal consequence. With God in control over time and history, everything happens in His sovereign time and tomorrow holds no surprises for God. I must stop and think about God's sovereignity and control. All things must point to Jesus and that should dominate my life and the way I live.

Only the Lord can keep us from falling. Look out for dangers that draws us away from God. We are to keep ourselves with the love of Christ and keep on loving Him, growing in our knowledge of God's word and speak God's truth to each other. Live my life in eternity and be an active 'waiter', waiting for Jesus' promised return.

Tara spoke about discipleship which has encouraged and affirmed me why and how I disciple others. I realised that I felt it was an impossible task to disciple/read the Bible with someone ages ago. In the past 2 years, I am really privileged to be able to disciple 1-2 girls and see them grow in their love for Christ and being challenged in living out a life for Christ and not for themselves. Tara suggests that 1-to-1 discipleship really is not a difficult thing. Anyone can do it. It is just 2 persons coming together to read God's word together and learn and grow together. It has challenged me to do 1-to-1 discipleship with more than the 1 person I am doing with now... in particular, with a couple of international students whom I know of.

My life here on earth may be a long time, it may also be a short time. How and what am I doing that make things count towards the eternal Kingdom? Sometimes life may be tough, but knowing that God is sovereign and in control, whom and what shall I fear/worry?

Preeettty Afternoon

I had a lovely girly afternoon tea today. It was FC's bridal shower and we were invited to Mt Tambourine to spend a pretty afternoon tea at "Tea and Niceties".

The maid of honour put in quite some effort in making it a pretty event - she made a really pretty recipe book for the bride-to-be with recipes contributed by us, a notebook with our messages to her. FC also ordered a pretty cake, made by my SIL W. The rest of the set-up was by T&N.

Look at all the pretty things.... don't they make you feel pretty? :)

Naturally, being very human :p the food was quite the highlight. The 3-tiered treats were so so delicious and too pretty to eat. All the table set-up, the entire place is filled with pretty things and European style high tea decor. I was just so thrilled... I think this is my first time having arvo tea in such a beautiful place. It was pure indulgence for me. Of course it was also a good time of girl chats and time with FC.

The bridal shower cake (chocolate cake with ganache in between) by my creative and talented SIL

Look at the details... so sweet...

I will definitely do this again... probably with other girls some time (it is not quite a place for men :p). Another suggestion was for a few of us to come together for such a treat at one of our place and we make one type of little pretty food each and put them together to share. What a great idea and I am so looking forward to it :)

This (Last) Year's Log Cake

Was meant to be "this year's log cake" but now it has become "last year's log cake" since I am behind in my entries... Have been lazy to blog :p

Made this 'cheat's log cake' for church's Christmas eve dinner. Bought 2 chocolate rolls from Coles and cut them up to angle the sides of the 2 pieces. Made a chocolate ganache to spread over the cake. Dust with icing sugar and put on some decorations... and there you go! Doesn't it look good? I think this is a better version of the one (with the same recipe) I made in Christmas 2008. ;)

Christmas Tree(s) at Home

Last year we put up a 2D Christmas tree. This year, we decided to do it again! We do not have a big house  to put up a tree and we don't want to spend lots of money buying the tree and decorations. Most of all, (I know I am weird) I don't really like to put up a Christmas tree because I have to set it up, pull it down and store it for next year, only to repeat it again. It really does not matter if we have a Christmas tree at home or not. Because to us, Christmas is not about a tree but about a birth of someone special. Hence we prefer not to spend too much time, effort and $ to make up a nice Christmas tree.

The tree above is made up of Christmas cards about the birth of Jesus. Bought these at Spotlight for 50% discount. Spent a maximum of A$4 for all the cards. The stars were part of what I bought for last year's tree. The other costs include my time and the blue tack that we use to stick the cards on the wall.

After the tree went up, moments later, I found this Christmas-tree shaped Ferrero Rocher box which someone gave to us last year. We decided to fill it with handmade paper stars made by hubby, sealed the box and place this small tree at our stairway. The little star on top is part of the set of stars I bought last year. There is no cost to this tree, except our time to put in the stars and ensure that they fit in nicely. So this year, we put up 2 trees but at the price of 1 - A$4!

If $ and space were not a concern, I'd really love a real pine tree (but someone will have to put it up for me :p). The company I used to work for puts up a huge pine tree every year. I love the smell of pine trees! But I doubt I will ever buy a real pine tree for my home here... For now, I am happy with different 2D or $-friendly trees every year :)

I Love Brisbane!

(Top from left) I touched a gecko (eeks!!), native live geckos, indian lunch
(Bottom from left) Live cooking demo, I love BNE, my favourite (not the colour though) Mini

W brought me to a show/fair not too far from our place last Sunday. Had a little fun in the hot sun looking at various Brisbane City Council displays and environmental efforts.

Was quite cool to see some live geckos and snakes (most were kept in their plastic containers). There were 3 tamed geckos that were outside their containers. I thought they were fake but they turned out to be live ones which just don't move much because they are tamed. With that, I touched one of them gently and still had goose pimples all over me...

It wasn't a huge event but it was a relaxing 1 hour spent walking around, eating, looking at things and breathing the Brisbane air. This is what aussies like to do on their weekends... I would, so long as it is not too hot :p

Brisbane River Fire

While we were waiting at the riverstage... waiting...

The annual Brisbane River Festival began with a (literal) bang on 12 September with the F-111 dump and burn. This is my 2nd time watching the fireworks live in Brisbane. The first was riverfire 2 years ago, where we caught it from Kangaroo Point. This year, we went early, parked at Roma St Parklands and had our home-prepared picnic style dinner at the park and then walked 30 mins to the city Botanical Garden's river stage by 6pm to settle ourselves in a nice spot to watch fireworks and the Chris Isaak concert.

We were happy to get a spot not far from the stage. It was a cool (cold later in the night) evening. We chilled out for an hour while waiting for the fireworks to begin at 7pm. (We read that we could not bring food in. Otherwise, we would have a picnic dinner! But hey, the guys allowed us to bring in our half-eaten chips and drinks in anyhow!)

You know it is 7pm when you hear the F111 flying closer. With that, the fireworks began! We felt so fortunate that we were where we were. We sat/lay down on the grass (on a picnic mat) and watch the big sky with fireworks. Where we were, we could see fireworks sprouting from 3 locations (there were more along the river, from tall buildings in the city and from the river). If you can imagine, the fireworks were at my 11 o'clock, 3 o'clock and 5 o'clock location. It felt like we were surrounded by fireworks! The sky was simply so beautiful - black with colourful sparkles of light.

I figured that was one of the best places to view the fireworks, without having to squeeze with the massive crowds at Southbank and Kangaroo Point and the Story Bridge area... not unless you have own an apartment or penthouse along the river (which is my dream!) which you can watch it at the privacy of your own pad or enjoy it with a few friends invited to your pad.

Video clip taken with my mobile phone, which shows you how we were surrounded by fireworks

The 30-minute fireworks presentation ended with another F111 performance. It was only now that I reckon Brisbane fireworks are better and a lot more than those I see back in Singapore. Fireworks in Singapore goes for 15 minutes maximum (I think). The river fire fireworks has accompliment music (if you tune in to the radio or watch it live on tv from home) in which the fireworks seem to 'dance' along to the music/songs (we watched the recorded version on tv at home a few days after). Anyway I heard that the Sydney's New Year's Eve fireworks are much better... Hope to see it in person one day...

Chris Isaak's concert began 1 hour after the fireworks. By which we saw more and more people congregating to the river stage as they move from various different locations to where we were after the fireworks. By then, we were really glad we 'choop' the place earlier so that we could enjoy the concert comfortably within the boundaries of our picnic mat :) The highlight of the concert was when Chris decides to walk into the audience and singing along at the same time... and stopping to take photos and shook hands with people. Just as I wished, he walked along to where we were. I stick my hand out into his path and he shook my hand! Hee hee but hubby was busy videoing him that he did not realise that and hence nothing was captured on photo or video :p

Very thankful for the relaxing evening well spent... especially after we spent a couple of hours in our garden weeding away earlier that day :)

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

BBQ in Singapore Too!

Whilst I am getting excited about bbq last weekend (I get to eat and not cook), my SIC (sisters in Christ) in Singapore are also planning for a bbq gathering in a month's time, aussie style! How cool is that? :)

Hmm... I wonder if there will be any men doing the cooking and cleaning at the event?

Char Siew BBQ Pork

Last month, in my search on the internet to find out how I can make chee cheong fun sauce, I stumbled upon this blog which I found the receipe to do so. Boy, this person is a serious food recipe blogger. I reckon she is an Asian and living in NZ. I have been wanting to make char siew for some time but I have not gotten down to it. I noticed that there is a recipe on the blog so I thought I'll try it!

This Sunday is Father's Day in Australia. Australia's Mother's Day is the same as Singapore's (2nd Sunday of May) but I am not sure why the Father's Day is different. As my younger SIL is leaving for holidays this Sat and my older SIL and hubby are going away for the weekend, the Wong family celebrated Father's Day today at W&R's new place. Because it is a working day for me, I was originally spared from bringing a dish. Later I figured that I could marinade a meat dish and cook it with my turbo broiler (which is portable and I can bring it to the office) while I work. Char siew became the natural choice to make :)

Roasting with my turbo broiler (photo taken with mobile)

The original recipe calls to use pork belly but I didn't want the many layers of fat (which I will end up spitting out) and so I ended up using "collar butt" pork. Collar butt has a few streaks of fat in between which you need because of the roasting/grilling. Otherwise the meat will be too dry and tough.

End result (blurred photo using my mobile)

The char siew ended up really yum! With the left over marinade and honey glaze, I put them in a saucepan and bring it to the boil. Add cornflour to thicken the mixture. Serve the gravy with the meat :)

Hubby's Birthday

Hubby turns 3x today! He does not like to make a big fuss about birthdays and especially his own. He reckons it is just another day... except to be thankful for the life that God has given him and be thankful that he has the best gift of all - salvation and eternal life through Jesus Christ.

A few other things to enjoy on and during your birthday, is to have birthday privileges and discounts :p Baskin Robbins Aust has a birthday club that anyone can join and sign up. Near your birthday, they will email you a coupon to print out and you can go to your nearest store to claim your free 70g scoop of any ice cream flavour. Hubby is not a big fan of ice cream. I signed him up nevertheless, so that he can give his wife (who loves ice cream even in this cold winter) a treat (at no extra cost). Being a member of this club, one can sign up your family (and I think friends too), so that you will be emailed a coupon on their birthdays. You can then give it to them and/share it with them ;p

You can also join a currently ongoing contest on a Christian family radio station 96five and see if you or your family/friend will be lucky enough to be picked to win a free birthday cake, courtesy of Toowong Fresh Patisserie. I signed up both hubby and my father-in-law (whose birthday was 2 days ago)... This morning at about 7.10am, hubby and I were woken up suddenly from his ringing mobile phone. The radio station rang him up and told him that he won the birthday cake! 1-2 minutes later, the short interview of "what are you doing for your birthday?" and "what did you get for your birthday?" of hubby was played on the radio station (anyone heard it??)

Toowong French Patisserie's shop front is big, not your typical cake shop

The carrot cake that I chose (hubby is not a fan of chocolate, coffee and liquer)

The night was spent with me and my in-laws (since we usually go over for dinner on Wednesdays). Thank God for the gift of this birthday cake for us to enjoy :)

It was a day loaded with sugar. Hubby's colleagues also celebrated for him with a marble mud cake from The Cheesecake Shop (one of my favourites)

My SIL, W made a cake (mixed berries with butter icing) last week. It was a hit with the family!

The same mixed berries cake but with a different decor. This was the original recipe and decor, made by W for R and G's birthdays last month

After so many sweet cakes, I am baking a savoury quiche for hubby's little surprise gathering with a few closer friends this Friday. The next 2 birthdays in this W family won't be until November. I wonder what cake will be next? :p

Kooroomba Lavender Farm & Winery

Hubby knows that I'd like to visit a lavender field one day and he knows I like wine-tasting. So what more appropriate when he found out about a place where they have a lavender farm and a winery! Hubby did some research and publicised it to some friends to see if anyone would be keen to join us. And so last Saturday, family, friends and friends of friends join us, driving 1 hour and 15 minutes to Kooroomba Lavender Farm and Winery.

(From top left, clockwise) Wine-tasting, lavender products, lavender flowers and lavender tea (blend of China black tea, lavender and fennel)

Although it fell a bit short of my expectation of seeing fields of purple everywhere, I also realised that it is not the best time of the year to see lavender in bloom. The reason why Kooroomba has some in bloom is because of the various species that it plants. I really love it there... standing in the midst of the flowers, looking at the vineyard (which was bare now because it is winter) and the mountains nearby... and with the silence of creation around you (except for the sound of some birds chipping)... the feeling was really amazing as I admire God's creation of nature. It immediately makes you feel very relaxed and everything that you worry about seemed so much less important. I love the moment where I could just breathe in the fresh air and just enjoy the few seconds where I am just simply absorbed by nature.

Lavender in the foreground, bare vineyard in the middle/right and the mountains in the back

Free wine-tasting is also available. It was really nice to enjoy their good selections of wine. I particularly like their Alba and Port. The wine also kept me warm and so I was not very cold when I was out in the open fields.

My lunch - Havens croft free range chicken with Kooroomba Alba wine, streaky bacon,
creamed spinach and a mushroom chive galette

And of course all of us also gave our cameras a good workout :)

The bees love the lavender too

Me and my niece

Now I have another place to bring overseas visitors to when they visit Brisbane :) And I may go back there in Spring to drink more wine and see more lavender and also to buy more lavender flowers so that I could put them in my wardrobe, bake them in my cakes and cookies and give away to some close friends in Singapore.

Baking Treats

My SIL and I have been assigned to prepare morning tea in church tomorrow, which also happens to be Mother's Day. We decided to not only bake something for morning tea, but also bake some little treats and give it to the mothers in our congregation.

SIL baked 5 different flavours of cookies - jasmine tea, coffee, chocolate, black sesame, lemon & lime, while I baked some little cupcakes, inspired from the pretty cupcakes that I see in my recipe book.

Daisy cupcakes: From the recipe book (left) & the result of my effort (right)




Custard apple cupcakes: From the recipe book (left) & the result of my effort (right)

It was not easy to replicate the pictures in the recipe book. Reason being the sizes that I made were much smaller. I had made the small 3 cm diameter sized, as supposed to the normal 7 cm diameter sized cupcakes. And so when I was decorating the daisy cupcakes, I had to be really careful and use my (clean) fingers to put everything together. As for the custard cupcakes, it was not easy too. There is a custard filling in the centre of the cake, and so I had to put a layer of cake mix, top it with a custard filling and top it with another layer of cake mix. Finally I have to top it with small slices of apple. After it is baked, a dash of cinnamon sugar is sprinkled on the top of the cakes.

Together with the yummy cookies made by SIL, we put together 19 bags of such above (cookies at the bottom and cupcakes on top). The number was 19 because I only had 19 of those cookie bags that I brought over from Singapore (bought from Phoon Huat). Our English congregation only has a few mothers in our midst (thankfully! :p). 19 should be more than enough to go around. It was quite a tiring effort and I spent most of my day making them yesterday. However it was really quite fun and brings quite a lot of satisfaction having seen the end product, although I think I can improve on the decor of the cupcakes. I would probably need another occasion to motivate me to make them the next time!


In addition to that, I also made 2 other batches of cupcakes (above) for morning tea tomorrow. SIL also baked extra cookies for morning tea. Notice that the cupcakes are different. These are improvised from the daisy cupcakes recipe. I added rainbow rice sugar on top of the cakes instead of the chocolate beans and marshmallows. And I had added cocoa powder for the second batch and also topped it with crushed Flakes.

Lastly I would like to present this to my dear mummy - 2 heart-shaped cakes =)

To my dear mummy: 母亲节快乐！原主赐福给你。我不能亲自送这蛋糕给你。但我会带你把它吃掉! (HAPPY MUMMY'S DAY! May the Lord bless you. I cannot really give you the cakes in person but I shall eat it on your behalf!) :p

"Wasabi"

That is the name of the basketball team which consist of players mainly from CP CCCB. There has been a season of inter-church basketball competitions and hubby and I (in an attempt to do something with hubby in the things that he likes :p) have been going to support and watch them play every Sunday. It turned out to be quite exciting to watch... and to support the guys that we know.

Being there and watching the games live, has made me recollect my basketball days during secondary school. Those were the days that I played everyday before school, during recess and sometimes, after school. It was also an attempt (then) for me (hopefully) to grow taller :p In secondary 3 and 4, I was part of the team to play inter-class basketball competitions. There were quite a few netball (they turn basketball players to represent the class) and basketball school players in my class and so being part of the team, I have had the glory of winning silver and gold respectively in those years. In those days, I would also attend almost every game that my school team was competiting against to watch them and support them.

The game (snapped with my mobile phone camera)

Now when I watch the games, I felt the difference. Difference is, I have lost most of my energy to scream and cheer for the team. My throat feels dry when I scream a little bit. And, I also realised that I have forgotten some rules of the game and always bothering hubby "hey, what does that mean? What's that foul for?"

D, the star player, about to shoot one of the most crucial score

Wasabi has made it through to the finals last weekend. That game was really exciting! They have lost to this opponent before and this was the second time they met to compete. Not until the last minute, did Wasabi scored one more goal to win their opponent by 1 point! It was really so close and all of Wasabi supporters were sweating away and cheering for them and some silently prayed for them.

This Sunday, they will be competiting in the finals. And yes I will be there to cheer them on :)

Everything Anew

Its been more than 3 long months that I've not blogged. Obviously I didn't quite have time to blog. Apologies to those who have been reading this and thinking "what's been happening to Island?" Take it as my honeymoon break then ;)

This is day 115 of me being "Mrs Quop". 115 days sounds short isn't it? To me, it feels like its been longer than that. I've enjoyed married life thus far :p I suppose the many events in life makes it feel like its been a long time. In fact, last week's events feel further than a week ago. The only thing that feels 'near', is when I had to do housework - "Didn't I just vacuum the floor yesterday?", when in fact it was a week ago that I last vacuumed.

Let me try to provide short summaries of various events that happened since November last year...

Moving into our new home
In one of my previous entry, I shared about how we got our new place. We moved in exactly one week before the wedding. The previous occupants could only vacate 8 days before our wedding and we moved in the next day. Was really good timing as my first overseas guest also arrived that morning and so she should stay in with us. Thinking back, it was a really 'messy' yet fun time - having friends and family staying all under one roof of a 3-bedroom townhouse.

MENpower and a truck rendered for the move

I was thankful for friends who helped us to move, parents-in-law and siblings-in-law who helped us to move and clean up the new place, my parents and family for bringing over some household items and my personal belongings from Singapore, practical and useful wedding gifts that we received, etc. We were indeed and truly very very blessed.

My new bed (then). We were really blessed to buy this queen-sized latex mattress & base for half the price of normal retail! Owner of shop happened to be hubby's high school mate. This bed has been the same reason why we tend to want to sleep in everyday...

Wedding gifts - the Corelle dining set was exactly the set that I like and had thought of getting. The couple who gave us this gift did not know that I like the exact same set.

The numbers 1 and 7

These 2 numbers are easy to remember. The numbers make up the digits of my birthday and my wedding day and they are 16 days apart. I have made hubby promised never to celebrate both the occasions together.

By the grace of God, we finally got married. We are thankful that the wedding service had encouraged many guests. We were most concerned with God's word that was shared at the wedding. Everything else was secondary.

My new enlarged family - my parents, my sister, my brother, parents-in-law, 2 sisters-in-law, 3 brothers-in-law (2 are Singaporeans) and a (then) 11-month-old 'niece-in-law'

We also had a celebration in Singapore 6 weeks after our 'first' wedding. Had a good time (but not enough) catching up with family and friends for 2 weeks. Having 2 weddings was tough and stressful. I wonder how those with 3 weddings do it!

Singapore wedding - with my 2 flower girls Cha and Jo

A simple wedding dinner

Honeymoon
2 weddings = 2 honeymoons. We went for 2 short honeymoon trips, which in total, was probably only half of other's usual 1 honeymoon trip. After my family and overseas friends left Brisbane, we went for a simple 3-nights' stay at Mount Tambourine. It was a simple hotel/motel room. The only highlight was the spa bath tub and the Japanese theme of the room. We like the idea of honeymoon being a relaxing one and so we didn't plan any programme but just went there to rest and recuperate from my ill health (since 2 weeks before the wedding) and our stressed minds and bodies from wedding preparation and events.

After the Singapore celebration, we flew to Bali for a 2-nights' stay at a resort. Even though this was a shorter trip, the place was really rather luxurious for us. We were really thankful for my good friends who had given it to us as a gift for us to enjoy and relax. The package came with romantic meals, 2-hr massages and a stay at the lodge with a spa bath and a private eternity pool. I suppose no time is too short for a rest. The trip marked a closure to all our wedding related events.


New married life in 2008
We were happy to return to Brisbane to begin our new life together. God was really gracious... we returned to Brisbane on a Monday and by the Thursday of the same week, I had a call to go for an interview the next day. A week after the interview, I got a call that I was successfully recruited amongst the few candidates that they interviewed. And another week later, I started work.

I was really amazed at how God answered my prayers regarding the job that I have gotten. The job had that hours that I wanted, the location that I had hoped for (near home), Asian boss and colleagues that I had wished for, flexibility in arrangement of work hours and in the industry that I was very familiar with. I am now working part-time permanently at a doctor's practice. I am really thankful for the work even though I am much over qualified for the job, I am contented and happy with the nature of work. The part-time hours gave me time to spend time on other things. I had taken one month to get used to the hours and time management, etc. After all, it is well known that the Aussie lifestyle is slow and relaxing... so I am happy to take things slower (although I am too fast for them) Thus far, I am not bored. There is always something for me to do and often, not enough time to do the things I want. This explains why I have been absent from blogging... :)

Church & Ministries
Hubby and I attend a young adults (yes, I am still young) fellowship group in church. Hubby has just been given the leadership of the group and since I am learning to be a supportive wife to him in that aspect.

I have taken up the coordination role of church's Welcomer's Ministry. It has been really nice to meet new people and looking out for them. Even though my church is small, many of the recent newcomers are from Singapore! I am glad that I can help to look out and minister to my fellow countrymen.

I am also now meeting up with 2 younger girls to do a set of women's bible studies and we meet every fortnight. Its been good and we hope to continue to grow in the knowledge of God's word.

Hmm, I wish I had more time to do my knitting... its autumn now means winter is coming and I am looking forward to it!