Saturday, December 27, 2008

first taste of school

mingwei and shiqi attended school for 3 days during the last week of school term here. the idea is to get them familiarize with their new school environment sooner. not to mention they are basically bored stiff from doing nothing much during the last 3 weeks or so.

they made friends quickly and enjoyed school.
orchard grove primary school is a mere 5 minutes stroll from our place. as there are a lot of autonomy in the way school is run, the school have joint classes, level 1 consists of prep, level 2 for year 1 and 2 students. shiqi will be in level 3 where year 3 students will join the year 4 while mingwei will be in level 4. they will learn german as a second language and there are many electives where students are assessed on their interests level and placed in groups where they will taught on areas of their assessed strengths. this could be in the area of language, arts or sports.
to learn more about the kid's school, http://www.orchgveps.vic.edu.au/

first visitor

we had our first visitor last week when cecilia's friend seok keng and her family dropped by during their melbourne tour.

we had dinner in boxhill and they did a stopover to look at our bare home.
(it is not difficult to tell who's local in this picture. the one with the large overcoat and scarf is definitely tourist. was it that cold in december in melbourne?)

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

getting there....aussie style

one could tell that we have been making good stride in our effort to `australi-zing' ourselves, via the food cecilia whipped up.







(aussie burger during the first week)








(aussie burger yesterday. 8.dec.08)



definite progress!

first aussie friend

we have lived here for a little more than 2 weeks and in the last few days, the kids made their first friend here in australia.
olivia sharma is 10 and is an indian migrant studying here.
the canterbury townhouse courtyard is considerably noisier with the kids playing from 6-8pm almost everyday.
unfortunately, it all ends today as we leave this place tomorrow morning.
shi qi exchanged email address with her. hopefully their friendship lasts.....

pet taxi

i drove to dandenong south this rainy afternoon with shi qi to pick up the new coffee table i won in ebay when we drove past a pet taxi. shi qi was intriqued by it.

i reckon it does pet transport to different locations with/without the owner.

who says it's a dog life out there?

school for the little one (at last)

finding pre-school for the shimun has proven to be harder than we thought. we couldn't find a place for her as most of the pre-school within the vicinity of where we live is already taken up. i realized that pre-school registration happened back in july, so we are a few months late.

so we spoke with the whitehorse pre-school association to seek help. they tried to match us with a school that is closest to our place and after a couple of days, we were told that a place (last slot!) has been made available to us at parkmore pre-school, which is about 3.5km away.

this morning, we rushed over to the school and gave shimun's name to the school and pay our deposit. bree, the teacher who helped us with the registration, is an extremely enthusiatic teacher.

with this, we completed another major milestone in settling down here.
(pic: shi mun at the front gate of parkmore pre-school. she starts 2 feb 09)

Saturday, December 6, 2008

unpredictable melbourne

'read the weather forecast before you step out.' this has been the most oft given advise to us. still, we have been caught out in the cold many a times. today is a perfect example.
it started out really chilly in the morning but by 11am, it is glorious warm, sunshine. and when we were driving from mitcham to syndenham in the early afternoon; in the space of 3 traffic light stops at around the city centre; the temperature reading in the car dipped from 31 degrees at the first stop to 27 degrees celcius 3 traffic lights later.
at my cousin's place, there were 3 spurts of moderate rain lasting 2-4 minutes each within 60 minutes; cloudy one moment, sunny the next. the same thing happened when we were back in boxhill south. we had a couple of moderate rain lasting 2-3 minutes each, interspread with sunshine. as i write now (7.30pm melbourne time), it is clear sky outside. one cannot tell that it rained earlier if not for the slightly wet ground outside.
in the last 13 days we have been here, only snow eluded us. we won't rule that out for now.....(even with summer beckoning)

Friday, December 5, 2008

our own crib (at last)

we finally signed the lease of our rental home yesterday. shiqi and i went to the place today for a quick measure up so we can get some household appliances we need that would fit. this will be the place we will call home for the next 13 months at least.
this place is in an eastern suburb called blackburn south. it is a typical middle-class, quiet suburb. i really look forward for some peace and quiet living here.
what also clinched it for us is that there is a school 200m from where we live where mingwei and shiqi can enrol in; a reserve park on the back of our place so we have wide open space behind us, north-south facing so we do not get any `direct' sun and this is only about 3-4km from my office. my plan to commute with my dahon foldable bike seemed a distinct possibility. a short bike ride away will also see many amenities available; including a safeway supermarket, 24hr macdonalds, ezy video, convenient stores and asian eateries. forest hill chase mall is 6 minutes drive away. really convenient.
(shi qi posing with our new crib)
this is a 4 bedroom house with a good size backyard that the kids can have a bit of fun with. slightly compact in size, it is however very well kept. this is one of the few house viewings that we visited that we like the `feel' of it once we stepped inside.
i cannot tell you too much about this place yet as i will only collect the keys next saturday. the only reason i am ranting about this is that it is such a big relief to get hold of a place of our own after an intense search for a week. phew....


who's your mummy (now)?

ever since i found out online that vicroads provide custom plates for cars quite a few months back while in singapore, i have been plotting to get one for cecilia. i think it will be a cool thing to do and also a nice breakaway from singapore where everything is so regulated.
`moi moi' is the nickname her family and close relatives call her. after some self brainstorming, i thought the name would be perfect for her. it would so much nicer than all the boring `ken 88' or `rose 168' we typically see in other customized plate cars. only a select few and those in the inner circle will understand the meaning of moi moi.
therefore, one of the things i did on the quiet once we bought our car is to go to vicroads to have this name registered to us. it really didn't cost me as much as well. 3 days after the registration of the plate, it came in the mail. i needed to keep everyone in the dark including the kids as they are the worst secret keepers (as i found out the hard way previously)
this morning, under the pretext of taking the car to the workshop for a quick fix, i have the car plate replaced. i showed cecilia later in the evening but her reaction was not the `whooohooo.....' i anticipated. she was rather muted. i had expected her to shower kisses at me on the spot.
i hope she likes it nevertheless and takes good care of the car.
(out with the old and in with the new)

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

not quite here (yet)

earlier this afternoon, we braved the evening rush hour traffic to head to a furniture shop and harvey norman to shop for some furnitures and household appliances.
we reached our 1st destination as about 5:40pm and discovered that the closing time was 5:30pm. the same with harvey norman.
we have been complacent with our singapore mindset. lesson learnt!

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

trick or treat

#2: when buying eggs in a tray, make sure you open the tray to check that every egg is good. otherwise, you may get a hatched chick inside.