it comes in red now

my new car

Day Trip to Lake Tekapo

Finally! After hearing what a wonderful place Lake Tekapo is from E all this time, I finally got a chance to see it for myself. The time needed to travel to the lake itself was gonna take us nearly 4 hrs to reach, so we got up a little bit earlier this morning to make up some time for it.

9am: E reach our place. Me & mom still busy packing all the things we need to bring for the trip. Towels, shampoo, swim suit (for the hot pool), dumplings, water.. etc

9:15am: left the house. "oh no! I can't find my phone!" *searching the bag like a mad woman*

9:16am: "oh! I found it! is just here =D" "right..."

9:20am: Journey started... Mom felt a sleep, at the back of the car, half an hour later. =D

10:40pm: stopped by Oomaru to visit the Whitestone Cheese Factory. We got to try a whole range of cheese; soft cheese, press cheese or hard cheese, you named it they got it.

lemon cheese cake~ made with their home made cheese.

we even bought 2 more cheese cake back to Dunedin =)

11:20am: Waitaki dam

1:15pm: Salmon farm! yummy, fresh Salmon! =D

because is winter now, the salmons were not very active. Apparently if you come in summer, you can see them jumping around a lot more and very high too.

2:10pm stop by Lake Pukaki for some pictures and also the start of our snow ball fights ;D

mom at Lake Pukaki

2:50: Lake Tekapo. We went to the Alpine Spa for a little walk instead of getting ourself into the hot pool. Mom was pretty insisted on having a private pool, so since they do not have one, we just gonna pass. But I'll definitely want to go back there again.

3:05pm: Went for a drive around town and to the Church of the good Shepherd. Took lots of pictures here. E even made a little snow man =D

3:20pm: tea break at theLake Tekapo Tavern while listening to Michael Jackson's songs.

4:00pm: more fun in the snow

spot E trying to throw a snowball at my mom. he was a dead meat soon after ;D

trying to make a snow angel~ my phone slipped out of my pocket here.

It slides really far away from me, on the snow.

So better keep your phone properly if you happen to make one next time

4:15pm: starts heading back home~

second week of holiday =)

So as I mentioned in my earlier post, am gonna make dumpling this week with my mom. So here are some pictures from the dumpling making sessions =)

Cooked bamboo leaf. We need to boil them till it's soften.

Then followed by brushing each and every one of them. Just to make sure that is clean.

The bamboo string: you need to boil them for a little while longer.

Till it dun break easily when you tried pulling them.

(this is to ensure that they will not break easily when you pull it a little bit stronger)

Ingredients: glutinous rice, salted egg yolk, mushroom, salted pork(raw), soybean, chinese sausage and some other spices (mom gt that sorted, so not very sure of it ;p)

and then put them to boil.

since is a little bit big, it took us a little longer to cook them

I managed to catch up with some of my live group girls too. Sofia and Darin, student from the Language center, joined us a bit later this year. They are going to be at the end of their journey here in Nz soon, so had a little catch up with them the other day. Man... time do flies so fast. Before I knew it, is time to say goodbye with them soon already. sadzz..

me & Darin

me & Sofia

Lychee Girls! xoxo

Lastly, not to mention, played a few good game of Dota with E, A and bro too. Although our first game got owned by the scourge ;p

Went out to watch The Shrek 4 just now, Happily ever after. I really loved the story line and humour from this movie, but, not enough to think is worth watching it in a 3D cinema. Maybe is just the cinema, felt like the 3D effect wasn't as good as expected.

Oh well. Looking forward to my trip to Lake Tekapo tomorrow now! =D

Sunny Saturday, Somber Sunday

Woke up to a sunny Saturday morning and went to Farmer's market with mom, bro and Aunty Jenny. It had been ages since I last go to Farmer's market. Staying so much further away from town this year does have it's disadvantages and hence the chances of going out on an early saturday morning will go down the hill too. Had my favorite "Jam of the day" crepe from the usual French guy. This time however, I saw Crystal Diong serving in the stall as well. It was her first time serving, after an hour lesson from the master himself. Short lesson she got there, but the crepe tasted as good as the one I had before. Bravo Crystal =) I also had some of my old time favorite Bacon Butties and "Cheese and Hame" crepe, yum~~ . Bumped into Andrew, Din Din, Shirline, Chui Ling, Aunty Shefrin and Aunty Mee Kian too. Mom bought 3 big crab home, so we ended up having "Sweet & sour Crab" for dinner =D

Wanted to stay home and take a nap, since we stayed up late the night before to watch some HK drama, but since the weather is so nice... Why waste it right? =) So I suggested to have a short drive to Signal Hill.

me mom on Signal Hill

me and Max's shadow

me =D

After a short while on the hill, and since the sun is still up, we then head down to the Botanic Garden. Max wanted to feed the duckies, so oh well. lol. Here are some pictures...

bought some ice cream and walked around the garden

some random picture tat I took and edited. trying to create that old and time flies feeling on this picture. lol.

can you see the bird among the leaves?

the funny mushroom that my mom found

When is time to go back home, we took a short cut back down to the car park. However, we accidentally walk into a couple making out! It was superb PAI SEH! (=>.<=) we wanted to walk away as quickly as possible, but then mom who was a bit further behind asked us to stop. She want to take pictures, so the couple walked away instead. Sigh, no more short cuts next time, so awkward ne...

Brought mom to Saturday night church too. Not much people turned up today, most of them left for holidays already. I suppose half of them are still busy preparing for their exam. After church, we went up to Joel's place to watch the FIFA world cup. It was Japan vs Netherlands. I fall asleep by half time. lol, failed. Btw, Netherlands won. lol.

Woke up to a somber Sunday instead today, it rained a bit here in Dunedin too. Went out for brunch at Alto, Mornington. E came and gave us a ride. As for the rest of afternoon, we just stayed at home and keep warm with our new found favorite technology, the heat pump. hehe.

the new LIVE tea that E discovered. tasted really good. not too sweet or bitter either. like it lots

Quality Time with my love ones

Got woken up by my hungry mother this morning, lol. I promised her last night that I will make her cold soba noodles. So had no choice but to slide my lazy butt off the bed. =p

After our little brunch, we got all the tools needed to make our very first family picture's collage =) Yesterday, we spent some time together to chose a few nice pictures before printing them out from the photo shop. Cost quite a big hole in my pocket =( maybe should go back home to print. But oh well. So today, is time to put them all together as a bigger picture.

not gonna show you guys the completed collage. must come and see for yourself okay =p

Later in the afternoon, I went out for coffee with E. Since the sun is out, E suggested we head down to St. Clair beach. Unfortunately, the car parks was full. So we ended up driving around and explore the town a bit more. We then came across Filadelfio's Restaurant & Bar at The Terminus. Yes, there is another Filadelfio apart from the Botanic's garden. Got treated by E too, wee! Thanks love! =D

Here some picture of the place. Strongly recommended for special events or gatherings, as it got a small separated area for functions and all. Although is a bit far from the town itself, but it got a really good view of the sunset. Plus this place looks so cozy, with a touch of countryside style with it, that is so hard to not make you feel a wee bit of relax the moment you step into the place. Oh not to mention, the friendly manager does play a part too ;)

oversee the sunset from our table =)

post exam

sorry to all those who are still having exams or who are still working now. this post is just me bragging my boring time after my finals, as a BSc student (crossing finger that I pass every thing)

Honestly there were so many things that I wanted to do before the exams finished. But now, all those "can be done later" ideas seems to have vanished. However, I did managed to spend some quality time with mom since she had been here =D and also some other little things...

Baking for night church =) Vanilla flavoured cupcakes. But the top one is a chocolate flavoured tho.

some mini cupcakes made to welcome me mom to dunners again =)

Max's piano's assessment. He was really nervous that day, but glad to be there to see an awesome play by him. bravo my little brother.

Made sushi for dinner. it had been a while, missed a few ingredients. had to ran out to the nearest 24 shop to buy some.

I also went to the Asian grocery store with mom to grab some ingredients to make dumplings. She said we can start making next week. So looking forward to that!

I supposed after this week, I need to start preparing for my diploma. Yes, peeps. I am going to take a post-grad diploma in Management. Don't ask my why I jumped from being a science student to a commerce/ art student. Is just that it had been my interest to take up management since last year. However, due to the time table crashes, I had to give it up. So yeah, since I will be jumping straight into 200 lvl papers, I will need to work extra harder than any one else. So do pray for me aye.

my new toy =D

finally, 6 months of waiting! Finally got my new lappie! =D

HAPPY ^.^