Passed!

Source: Here

I initially planned to blog before today on this El Salvadorian food that my friend brought me to try in Los Latinos, Maidstone, a suburb in Melbourne. For some strange reason, I can't find the photos I took. They were nowhere to be found, not on the laptop, phone nor my backup HDD. So...no post :/

Today, however, is a good day and deserve to a post. Passed the paper I did in April. 2 down, 2 more to go. Time for food celebration... hahaha


Side note: Now... is it Friday yet? Grin. 

Ph(f)oto Friday: Kit Kat

Ignore the opened box ya...

A friend went to Japan and I am a happy beneficiary to some Kit Kat. So I opened the box for some chocolate goodness in no time, photo above were taken much later. :P

Friend has definitely learned well, he returned home from travel with food goodness. Haha.


Side note: Happy Friday again!

Sydney: Food and other things

The picture above has nothing to do with food or the hotel I was put at whatsoever, it is just merely because it is... Sydney and I was there hunting lanterns. I've travelled for work to Sydney on 4 occasions and all four times were at a different hotel. This time was at Sydney World Square on Pitt Street, between Liverpool and Goulburn Street. Venue is pretty good, there are good food options as it is already very close distance to Chinatown but also no swimming pool. :(

This was my sole trip this year so far and it was a work trip. My colleague and I was up in Sydney for 3D3N, flying out of Melbourne after office work on a Tuesday and back on in Melbourne again on Friday evening. To be totally honest, I didn't look forward to having dinner with my colleague (the one I fly to Sydney with) and would choose to dine by myself any day. I am horrible, I know. :|

The last Sydney trip I was also travelling with her and we had dinner separately except on work required functions. She probably did drop some hints and I didn't say anything. So I thought I should at least put in some effort this round and asked if she wanted to have dinner.

So Tuesday night dinner was with my colleague. The food was good though, I decided to just go to Sushi of Masuya (I had dinner there with my ex-classmates from Japanese class on my last trip). I was on almost best behaviour - send her review of where we would be going and make reservation for dinner. Almost because I took photo of my food, with a dslr nonetheless. Not discreet at all.

Off work Wednesday was fun. I make a point to meet up with my ex-classmates from my Japanese class when I was in Sydney - E, S and R but E was away in Hong Kong. S suggested we watched Lady Maiko which coincidentally scheduled to be aired at Japan Foundation, at no fee too. Movie was funny and entertaining, also great company. :) The night ended with ramen, at Ippudo of course. Hehe.

S was so sweet, she brought R and I each some home made Lunar New Year goodies too. They were delish! I inhaled them in no time.

Kek Batik

Pineapple tarts, black sesame cookies and peanut cookies

Dinner on day 3 was Thai at Chat Thai with an ex-colleague but I didn't take any photo. Haha. Failed food blogger - always eating at the same few food places.

As I went lantern hunting, there was a lot of walking around the CBD. So here are some photos in between the lanterns. Many are Lunar New Year theme decorations but well, it was after all during the festive season. Definitely more than Melbourne.

These were from Queen Victoria Building...

Still going with the Lunar New Year theme, this was in between the Ox and the Horses lantern on Martin Place, at the corner of Pitt Street I think.

I also went a bit off the "grid" and did a detour to Darling Harbour, guided by the lights... umm, that sounded a bit wrong as people do say, "Don't walk towards the lights." Grin, sorry, lame joke.

This was the most popular one. Many people stood at the front, took many photos/selfies and proceeded to check their photos at the same spot. Well, after all it does look like some place where people would take some cheesy wedding photo of some sort.

Here are some non Lunar New Year photos, just to balance things a bit. Haha.

As we start with a photo of the Harbour Bridge, here's another one from the same area.

Side note: Kek batik...yuumm.... 

Sydney: How Sydney celebrated 2016 Lunar New Year

If I had my timing right and/or I didn't run on a Malaysian time (read: late) this post won't be such a sore eye... haha... it is just over 3 months late. Haha... ok...

Aside from this being the icon of Sydney, the other reason why this photo has a connection to the title is the that blue, yellow and green blotch on the bottom right of the photo. A photo on Sydney Opera House generally won't not have this blotch if shot on a regular day but as this one was during the 2016 Lunar New Year period... this is what it was...

See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil...

This three monkeys were part of the Lunar Lanterns curated by Festival Curator Claudia Chan Shaw featuring the work of some of the contemporary artists. The lanterns were actually 12 glowing zodiac animals found around the area of the harbour, CBD and Chinatown. It was not a walk in the park walking in working shoes and carrying a heavy laptop cutting across Chinatown all the way to the harbour and back but I was pretty determined to find all of them.

Right across from the monkeys was the dragon, separated by water. To be honest, I was a tad disappointed with the dragon as because my over achiever imagination thought it would be a big kick-ass dragon sprawling under the Harbour Bridge but no, it was just a dragon's head.

The next lantern around the harbour area were the rabbits. It was difficult to take of photo without anyone posing like the rabbits even at the hour of 20 minutes to 12 am. Please see photographic evidence below. Lol. I waited for awhile but failed so I decided to just take some with them in it.

Next nearest lantern hunting ground would be Martin Place. There was one at top near Macquarie Street and the other at the bottom off George Street.

The Ox was the "resident" at the junction of Martin Place x Macquarie Street. When I shared this photo with Little P, she was excited to see this mahjong ox but commented that the colours versus the character on the mahjong tiles were not the norm. I have no clue about that as I can't play mahjong to save my life. The only time I came face to face with a mahjong set was at my late grandfather's home in Merbok and all we did was playing matching tiles game with my sister or cousin. Lol.

At the opposite end i.e. Martin Place x George Street side, was where the horses were.

The next place was not far to walk - the Pitt Street Mall. Here were where the rat, rooster and pig were found. It was a giant rat too!

I said it was a giant rat because the rooster nearby was about the same size-ish...

In my humble opinion, the cutest of all the 12 lanterns goes to .....*drum roll*... the piggies.

This is me... sleepy like a pig

Just about a block of so away at the QVB Forecourt stood the tiger.. a cute one, not a scary looking one.

Next batches of lanterns were in the Chinatown area - the dog, goats and snake!

How good does the snake look?!

Side note: May is a waiting month....

Brickvention Australia 2016

This was only a two day event and was wayyy back in January. Tickets were not sold at entrance or at the venue, but available online. I missed this twice because by the time I found out about the event it was already too late. Being the good kiasu Asian, I decided to put a reminder on my phone calendar to remind myself when the ticket started on sale... so I was there at Brickvention Australia 2016.

This event was held at the Royal Exhibition Building, a very beautiful building and there is no way you can miss it.

Some flowers at the garden outside of the building

Inside of the building

To start off, a little history on Lego.

Photos were encouraged in this exhibition, so this is a very photo loaded post.

There were a lot of projects on displayed, some were by kids and some adult. I think there were also competition with age grouping as I could see some had a "1", "2" or "3" tag on their display description board. The general display area were divided in rows, the middle one usually are bigger project. One of my favourite was a project displayed in the middle row, it was a very big one with moving trains, buildings of different area.

There was a section on Melbourne CBD, specifically Little Collins Street and it was nostalgic to see the places I frequent and walked passed with friends.

The good old Irish Times

As you round the exhibit, there were bits of Japanese garden and big patch of garden/greenery.

I like it that details like these were included. Cute :P

For the life of me, I cannot quite identify the one of the bottom left. 

Then of course there were large "transportation" models - vessel, aeroplane and trucks.

These trucks were mobile, controlled by remote control. 

It was also a happy place for Star Wars fans...

If Star Wars don't rock your boat, heaps of cartoon characters to keep you happy too.

Err... Does Simpson count as cartoon character?

Or Avengers... or Harry Potter... or anime...even The Big Bang Theory. Lol.

 

 Ok, last one...

Even though the one in 2016 has passed, pretty sure it will return in 2017 and the tickets usually started to be on sale in October the year before... probably will be the same again ;)


Side note: Rainy day - best kind of day to do nothing and stay home!