He has yet to make plans about some stuff left behind and give us the keys but we figured we’ll give him a week to do it himself.

After all, having lived with him for 2 years I we figured it was time to stop being his parents.

The night after he moved out I we did a big clean of the house – except for the bathroom/toilet. I need to work up more courage to get into it. There was a footy match going on: Fremantle vs Geelong, I think. Geelong’s the BF’s footy team, by the way. And Freo, a team which seemingly came out of nowhere (ie, not a big name) beat them. It was an amazing WINZ for Freo, especially since Geelong won the AFL Premiership last year. Top cats ain’t looking so cool anymore, heh.

After the match when the BF was helping me with cleaning the house I managed to get him to take a couple of pictures with me (fully clothed) in our now 100% ours (still renting) house!

First picture taken with a confused BF

Second picture taken with a posing BF

Third picture taken with a BF checking himself out on the phone

Fourth picture taken with a BF pretending to be a Freo player - Remember, Freo won Geelong!

That cyan band around his wrist, by the way, are weights. Some sort of iron sand are in them and each band is 1kg! I strapped them onto him during the match because even though he bought them months ago he didn’t use them, and I figured since he claps and cheers and does all these hand gestures while he watches the match he might as well work them muscles.

It’s mid-April, and the days have steadily gotten cooler. According to this google search result for Melbourne’s seasons, the April and May months are categorized as “Early Winter”. There are some warm days, but there has been a lot more rain and wind.

The backyard, freshly mowed a few weeks ago, is starting to look like a budding jungle again. The grass (and unfortunately, weeds) are lush and green, which is a rather deceptive trait because once you get out there you realize that instead of being warm and welcoming, your toes are frozen with the dew and squelching with mud.

Cold days make me hungry for filling Asian foods. Like the curry that my mum makes (A2 brand curry, chicken, potatoes simmered for ages), or nabemono, a winter Japanese dish that Skye has been torturing my imagination with (“Oh I just had sukiyaki last week!”).

So today I made bread and scones, then cooked Yeo’s Singapore Curry Sauce (‘Spicy!’) for lunch without meat nor potatoes (because we simply did not have them in the house) and ate it with the bread I made earlier. Yummy, though the curry did taste a tad… sweeter? than I expected.

I am going to make nabemono of some sort this winter… Just you wait Skye!

So what do I do on my 1st (or 2nd) day of being legal in Australia?

Sleep, of course. Need to make up for all the beauty sleep lost during the previous 18 months worrying, fretting and worrying some more over my visa status.

But I couldn’t let the bf think I sleep so much – so lazy right! So, I woke up with him this morning, had sexy time [which includes but is not limited to cuddling with the dogs (who spent 90% of the night on the bed)!], got up to iron his shirt while the Man of the House had his morning cleansing routine, baked bread after he left, had bread and egg for breakfast, then got on the computer.

Did the usual rounds of facebook, email, friends’ blogs… And then spent hours on Xiaxue’s blog. I’m on Page 7 right now… which only brings me to December 2009. She has a way of writing that sings to the Singaporean part of me, which is fast fading except for the giam lui (stingy) part of me. In fact, her Singlish is so powerful that when I stepped out to get the mail I was shocked to see an angmoh across the road. LOL!

Then I did some work… which basically involves me going to dreamstime and trawling through royalty-free images for placeholder images in Keystone’s latest marketing push – which is still a secret btw because I am making it. So out of my depth doing it… I want to go back to the website bits of it and just tell the BF to get a real designer lawlawlawl. I got about 20 images, then thought to put on some socks because it’s very cold. Fall mah… winter coming soon. :<

Except when I got to the bedroom I promptly curled up in bed with the dogs and went to sleep again! This time sleep for 2 hours! See – best way of not letting your bf know you sleep like a pig and snore like a cow is to have naps when he's not home. TRUE STORY!

So didn't want to get up, but later cannot sleep how? The BF will suspect and that is not good at all. He'll call me pig and break my heart. :< So I vacuumed the house (SO HAUSFRAU RIGHT!) and came to blog this.

The house is in a mess right now because the housemate is "in the process of moving out". Well, hopefully it will be soon because he was supposed to have been completely moved out during the 4 day long Easter weekend last week.

… OH MY GOD I DIDN'T TELL YOU ABOUT OUR NEW FRIDGE!!! Okay I'll do that in the next post!

P.S. Mega, like that enough for your voracious reading needs?!

If only I could write just a snippet a day… :P

Well.

My visa has finally been granted.

I can work now!

In my last post I wrote about the passing of a good friend’s dog, Bow Wow. Today, I am going to introduce our good friend’s new dog – Buddy the Rottie!

We met him a month ago for the first time at Brighton Dog Beach, and I’ve got some photos to share.

This is Buddy with his owner’s bright blue bum. He’s a bit slender still but they’re feeding him well, so he’ll probably bulk up pretty soon.

Brighton Dog Beach is always abuzz with people and pooches, especially on great sunny days!

Zac having fun with a black dog, which might very well be Buddy. You can see why we love the dog beach so much – it’s fenced and safe, and we can let our beagle boys off lead… Which is an amazing thing for us. Beagles are scent hounds and notoriously stubborn once on a scent trail – no amount of calling will bring them back to you unless they’ve been trained real hard to respond to you even when they are sniffing something good!

This is Dion… hehe, having a poop and looking absolutely miserable that he has to stop playing to attend nature’s call.

Zac again, modelling for us a popular accessory for pets – a squeezable water bottle which folds out for your pet. After folding the coloured bit out, you squeeze the bottle so water goes out into the, well, portable trough.

More pictures at my Flickr, including views of Melbourne from the dog beach and several of dogs and the beach itself.

For one, I realized just how much I missed my own two boys. Taking care of another’s dog while your own are elsewhere seems to make the heart so much more fonder, than if I were to be away from all dogs.

For the other, well, I saw how much pain you were in, both physically and emotionally. Physically because you got cancer and your leg had to be amputated. Emotionally because when you met my boys (to see if you all could get along) I could tell that you wanted so desperately to gallop around the half acre block we were on and play like a four legged dog. It made me resolve that if my boys were to ever be in your position, I’d choose the faster but more forgiving route of letting them sleep the eternal sleep.

I remember one morning a week into our stay with you in particular. It was eight in the morning, and we were still dozing in bed. I heard a great thump, and another, and then the most sooky little sigh I’ve ever heard. I made myself get up, because I thought you might be in pain and needed help of some sort. When I opened the doors, you were standing before the door with your great ugly mouth open, panting with the effort of hopping across the marble floor to get there.

When we said oh, good morning bow wow! You gave me the biggest, cheekiest grin I’d ever seen on you.

Turns out you had decided that we were late in giving you your breakfast (4 scoops of meat mince with a tablet from each of the two medications you took daily, with the tablets hidden well under the meat).

You were, we decided, even more of a grandpa dog than Dion the Grumpus is.

We originally put your mattress closer to the windows in the living room, so that you might have a view of your lands and be satisfied that no miscreant puppies sneaked in. On a day that the BF had to go out, leaving me at home, I pulled your mattress next to the long couch, so that I may read with you by my side. You seemed to enjoy your new position more, and so there you stayed till the end.

We spoilt you terribly with treats, if you remember. Those times were when you were the most active, tail whacking the floor so hard I was afraid you might break it. You endeavoured to look your best, so you kept your mouth closed and your eyes big… for a few seconds; then the excitement took over again and you were panting and slobbering all over the place, big snout nosing towards the hidden treat.

When we finally gave you the treat, you would finish it within mere seconds, and then be looking for more.

You enjoyed grooming and being touched (patted, hugged, stroked) the most. When I moved away you would pull your head up and stare at me with the most accusing eyes, as if the mere thought of going away from you should’ve never even crossed my mind and how dare I act on it!

We received the SMS on Monday. The cancer had spread to 30% of your chest. I am so sorry Bow Wow… Where you are with four legs, whole and hale again, I wish you well. Know that we love you.

There were a lot of beaches involved on the way to Cabarita and while we were in the general vicinity of Brisbane. Hopefully the pictures do enough justice as to just how beautiful they were – my favourite one was Hastings Point. The waters were significantly warmer than Melbourne’s and therefore that much more enjoyable – i.e., no shock freeze upon entering the water. The weather was cloudy for a few days after we arrived in Cabarita itself, but that was fine since the sun was so savage that I am now as brown as a coolie.

I plowed through six books while I was there, went body-boarding (now that was fun!), and we started watching Burn Notice. We also got to know this particular branch of the BF’s family tree a lot better (long story, complicated and too much trouble to explain really) and we had dinner as a family almost every night. Eight people, now that’s a crowd!

We’re going to get back to work on Monday – not looking forward to it at all. :(

Us, somewhere on a beach between Melbourne and Lakes Entrance

Above-mentioned beach, without me for a better view

Ship on the Sea - Look at those colours...

Me on Windang Beach

Yamba, Morning of 2 Jan 2010

Surfers Paradise - 4 Jan 2010

Me on Cabarita Beach - 5 Jan 2010

Posing against Cabarita Beach - 5 Jan 2010

Cabarita Beach

Hastings Point was a little inlet which got to about waist height as we waded in. It’s protected by the embrace of rock formations at the point, which meant that the waves broke early on the rocks and as a result, the water in the inlet itself was really calm. There were even little whiting (a type of fish) in the water swimming curiously all around you! It was amazing – we felt so close to nature, I could hit my ToL hotkey (Shift+T) and rest in peace there. (WoW moment over :P)

Hastings Point with the BF and his cousin - 8 Jan 2010

Hastings Point

Hastings Point

Me at Hastings Point

Us at Hastings Point

There is one Sushi Tei in Australia, and its in Sydney. Whenever we pass through Sydney we make a point of visiting Sushi Tei (which is something we started last year) and this year was no different. However, this year’s visit – we went with the BF’s dad and his wife – was rather disappointing.

Salmon Sashimi

Slices were half as thick as any other salmon sashimi I’ve had in all the Sushi Teis combined (Aus last year and Singapore)

Salmon Belly Soup... though in hindsight I should've moved the vegs to the side.

Ebi Mentaiyaki

This prawn dish was the most shocking of all for me. The prawn flesh stuck to the shell and removing it was a four lettered challenge, while the entire thing looked warped -

Ebi Mentaiyaki looked disfigured this year.

Definitely a far cry from the previous visits to Sushi Tei International (10++ visits?). Look at the difference with the picture below (snitched from Google Images and therefore someone’s blog probably):

Ebi Mentaiyaki as it should be

Absolutely shocking.

Perhaps I should start planning for a visit to Singapore for our next holiday for one day just to have good dishes again.

Oh wait, there’re outlets in Bali!

Duck-shaped paper clips and "natural"-look A5 Lined Spiral Notebook from Typo

I’m not sure if I’ve told anyone what a big fan of paper I am. I love the texture, the cleanliness, the many different colours, and the way they smell. But most of all I love them because, before computers and blogging came about, I used to write every day and night. Journal entries, short stories, character biographies, I wrote anything and everything. Even street directions. Typing on a keyboard just doesn’t compare… until now.

I’ve not written lengthy diatribes by hand for so long now that I can scarcely write more than a page or two at a sitting. And usually, the stuff that struggles out of my pen is so bland that I’m tempted to rip the page out and attempt my imaginary novel anew. The computer just churns text out so much faster, and so much more legible at that. How can my cursive handwriting ever compare to the stoic elegance of separated letters that you, a thousand miles away, can read? (Which reminds me, I have a post card I should make for someone in time for Christmas.)

Well people, if you’re ever in doubt what to get for me and don’t want to ask what I would like for fear that I would give you a list of items far beyond your budget, then a beautiful, sturdy spiral notebook or a nice ink (not ballpoint, they don’t seem to lend to my writing inspirations) pen would be perfectly lovely.

I had quite a nasty shock last night when I logged out of Ubuntu and booted into Windows 7… Or tried to, anyway. Each time, I was slapped in the face with a cold “Startup Repair could not repair this computer automatically”. Since I had to go into the office the next day, I decided to let the matter rest… for the moment.

(Obviously that strategy did not agree with me because I then had a dream about being in a war zone where the invaders were headquartered in a condominium and my people decided that the safest place was to find an empty unit right above these people…)

However, I am home now, and 2 hours later I had the problem fixed. It was so simple, I die inside a little time every time I think that I should have done Step 1 immediately.
Step 1: Boot from Windows DVD. Open a terminal. Type this in:

bcdedit /set {default} recoveryenabled no

Step 2: Reboot.

Step 3: Take note of error. For me, it showed that

\Windows\SysWOW64\drivers\PxHelp20.sys

was causing the error, being either corrupt or missing.

Step4: Find a way to rename file to .sys.bak – I used my Ubuntu installation for this, getting to that file with GUI.

Step 5: Reboot. Now, it should boot properly! Yay!

However, at this point I noticed that my CD drive is not working. It is seen and recognized in Device Manager, but with the yellow triangle exclamation mark icon.

Step 6: You should do a back-up of your regedit. To be honest, I didn’t do it, and don’t know how to.

Step 7: Get into regedit – Start > regedit.

Step 8: Navigate your way to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.

Step 9: Select “UpperFilters” – right click and delete it.

Step 10: Select “LowerFilters” – delete it too. ** Do not delete UpperFiltersBak or LowerFiltersBak if you have them!

Step 11: Close regedit and reboot.

Tadah! Now, everything works before whatever it was fucked your machine up! :>