Counting our blessings: Squeeze 'em!

In the winter, the flu bug is all around, and everyone around us seemed to be sneezing and coughing. Not long after we came back from the US, we caught the bug too. It was then that we remembered the lime ice cubes we had in the freezer and dropped 2 cubes into our honey drinks to soothe the irritated throat. Simple! 

A few weeks before we left for the US, Judy gave us a whole bag of limes fresh from her garden. Not only that, she lent us her citrus juicer and gave us a brilliant suggestion - squeeze all the juice and freeze them fresh!  We ended up with 3 trays of lime ice cubes! ;D

Agnes can cook #6

What do you do when you feel like having chocolate brownies at 9.15 at night?

You bake your own la! ;p

Forever Young...

... NOT!

As we approach the end of our 20s, who would have thought that we would still be attending a youth camp? But we did, sort-of. It's more of a sleep-over at church. In fact, we were quite excited as we prepared for it. On Friday, Kevin brought back the 10-inch Dobsonian telescope that he borrowed from ICRAR, assembled it and tried looking for interesting objects to look at in preparation for the actual day. The sky was perfectly clear.

Unfortunately, it started to get real cloudy on Saturday, the day of the actual event. However, we still managed to look at Saturn, Venus, Mars, the Jewel Box Cluster and Omega Centauri. We  also had a lot of fun over the fire... roasting mashmallows,

making classic S'mores with the graham crackers that Cindy had asked us to bring back from the US; Luke came up with a few creatives ways to make his S'more using a wooden spoon, tongs and...

even strings!

We had Mars bars fondue to dip our bananas and mashmallows in...

and damper bread, an Australian campfire bread... which taught us a lot on patience... as they took a while to cook over the fire...

The youth leaders have also prepared...

a Graffiti Room...

so that we could all do what we've been deprived of all this while...

As the night advance, we played a couple of games and watched a few movies. By about 3am, half of us decided to sleep while a few of them actually stayed up all night!

That's when we found out that we were getting too old for these sort of things, when our backs started aching as we tried to catch a few hours of sleep on the floorboards. And it didn't help that the baby was kicking the whole time since Agnes had to rest part of her tummy on her body pillow.

In the morning (more like a few hours later), we woke up for breakfast, followed by service in Church! And the Youth all went for service still in their sleeping bags! ;)

In the evening, we were back in church again with Anil and family as we tried to do a bit more stargazing amidst the "slowly" passing clouds, since Kevin still had the telescope.

And the moon was... really really round...

Hair-cut in the Winter

Last Friday, Agnes went to get a much needed hair-cut. First quotation given to her was $40 (equivalent to more than RM110) ! :O

She then decided to just compromise and get the hair chopped off and thinned... and paid $25 (equivalent to more than RM70) finally. This is by far the most expensive hair-cut she'd had all her life! To get the same thing done in Malaysia will probably cost us less than RM20 (equivalent to about $7). Time for Kevin to learn to cut hair... ;)

Waiting for the hair-cut...

All fresh and light...

We Have Company!

Eu Chung and Li Wern will begin studying at Edith Cowan University, so have joined us here in Perth! They arrived 2 Thursdays ago, together with Uncle Wong and Aunty King King (to help them settle down). And they brought the rain from Malaysia with them! Okay, we kinda welcome the rain because it brings the temperature up... :) Kevin was back from Tasmania the next day and we took the opportunity to catch up and what better place for that than at the Burswood Casino! At Carver's for buffet lunch la! ;)

As usual, it was so much joy having friends from home around. Aunty King King commented that Agnes is trying to hide her baby bump but really, it's the winter clothing! :)

We are now looking forward to the arrival of Julia, Farrah, Helena, Preeta, Sylvia, Kevin's family, Agnes' parents (all in the next 2 months) and finally, the bab-y! :D

Sojourn in Hobart Part 2

At the end of the third day of the conference, all the participants were herded into double decker buses and transported 20 over kilometres away to Mount Pleasant, where the radio telescope and the Grote Reber Museum is situated.

It was really interesting to learn about the life of this amazing man - Grote Reber - whom many refer to as the father of radio astronomy. He single-handedly built many of his own instruments, his own 'green' house, and a 'green' car. He was an eccentric character, but brilliant - always hands on. A ceremony was held to present an award in memory of Grote Reber to Alan Rodgers, another outstanding radio astronomer of our time.

After the ceremony, we were all shuttled to a nice seafood restaurant for the conference dinner.

Oysters! Yummy!

Kevin was glad he left before things started getting out of hand as the night wore off. Paper planes were flying around, soon to be followed by people. Having a roomful of PhDs and soon-to-be PhDs really didn't make any difference when it came to the effects of alcohol!

As Kevin's flight was late in the afternoon, he decided to have one last walk around the city for some snapshots...

The Tasmanian Tiger, officially declared extinct, but reports of sightings in the Tasmanian wilderness still persist to this day.

Sojourn in Hobart Part 1

Within a week of arriving back from the US trip, Kevin had to take a red-eye flight to Melbourne from where he would catch another flight to Hobart, Tasmania. Unable to sleep at all, he arrived in Hobart at about 11 in the morning feeling extremely sleepy and tired. unfortunately, the rooms were not ready, so he had to drop off his luggage at the backpackers hostel and go for a little walk around the city. And of course, the first thing to do was to head to his favourite place... the tourist information centre!

After a quick lunch at McD's and some more walking, Kevin went back to Central City Backpackers and waited for his room in the lounge, while chatting with some of the other backpackers staying there.

He finally checked in at about 2pm, and immediately changed and went to sleep...after taking a few pictures of the room. It's not bad really, and has a nice view too! :) He woke up for dinner, had a chat with Agnes on the phone and then went back to sleep...

The next morning, Kevin woke up at about 6am, got ready, and took the 7am bus to the University of Tasmania, where the Astronomical Society of Australia conference was going to be held. He realized he was a bit too early, and couldn't get into any of the buildings as they were still locked! So he had to wait outside in the cold...

Kevin with his poster...

4 days of talks by astronomers and students from all over Australia (and a few from elsewhere)...

Bracing the cold from different cities

Kevin is away in Hobart, Tasmania for an astronomy conference... yes, just a week after we came back from the US. Agnes, on the other hand has been knitting under the blankets and is thrilled to finish her first pair of socks which matches the mitts she knitted last week!

Now off to more knitting assignments for Agnes while waiting for Kevin's return!