Get Ready... Where to begin... Where to begin...
It all began on Christmas eve (probably because I can't remember back much further...), with me spending time with my parents at home. OOhh I should learn
to do that more often... it seems life gets quite busy from here on in. I actually went to
Church on that day (probably a big surprise there) but my parents were singing in the local
choir... so that was quite nice to listen to them, although it was ruined somewhat by
the very annoying woman in the green dress! Apparently she had a fall out with the choir
and so decided that the smartest and most mature thing to do would be to rock up on the night,
sit in the audience, and then sing at the top of her voice complete with all decorations to her
tone. Dang she was loud, but gosh... if you're going to pretend to be in the choir but not really
you might as well JUST BE IN THE CHOIR! Silly lady. Otherwise it was pretty good I think, with Hugh
as usual having the best voice... We then went for supper in the 'monastery' .. which wasn't very
monastery-like to me. It was quite well-presented I think, with a nice garden, a swimming pool
and ornate columns lining the main living room. Bit much for a Monk I think... hehe. That was pretty much
that day... sitting around waiting for Christmas to roll around...
Next day was Christmas day of course, where everything got started. After figuring out my plan for the
day (it was getting a bit complicated there for a second, trying to juggle 3 different get-togethers), it
finally came that lunch was spent at home with Mum and Dad... for a nice curry lunch. Not following tradition
at all, but we like to change things around a bit at home during Christmas. Now we didn't have a tree this
year either (the presents instead adorned the fireplace) because I went hunting for one... but simply
couldn't find anything suitable. It was damn hot too, but I marched off down the bush in search for
Christmas Bush, which is fantastic at this time of year. Unfortunately none was to be found, well, none that was flowering anyways. We have a lot of it growing down the back - in fact the bush is more of a tall tall tree, which is quite interesting. But since none had flowers... there wasn't much point in cutting a branch
of green leaves for our 'tree'...
I then travelled off to Rex's place for dinner, which was to be in quite a number of hours, so we had
a bit of time to unwrap the presents - which I will cover a little later on. I took a couple of photos
of the 'family' (I seem to be a member of a couple of families now... and I'm not bothered at all!)
so that was good too. They had a tree at least (hah!) but we quickly devoured it of it's goods neatly wrapped beneath. Even Tyson got a present, but as usual he had no idea what was going on and didn't even seem to want what he was given, but I think now he has enjoyed some of his bones and toys... heh. Funny little furry doggy.
So yes the party was to be at the Ma's, so that was pretty convenient. I kinda got there first, thinking
that I would be late... but then again thanks to the M7 it was actually quite 'fast' - about 1 hour 12 minutes door to door. Not too bad, considering there was no toll when I was going through (naturally I used it as much as possible but since the toll has started... oh well I haven't been down that way). A lot of the family came over, which is OK since I have met pretty much most of them anyways. The interesting thing is that both sides (mum and dad) come along, which would never ever happen I think for our Christmas parties. Or most family do's, except of course for a wedding! After spending many hours trying to remove the horrible taste of beer from my mouth, I chatted to Pie and Alice, as well as a cousin of Cynthia's, Em, and anyone
around my age basically. All the others were so noisy! heh. Dinner was certainly not traditional, well not
western-traditional anyways, so that was great. Lots of food to choose from, most of which I don't have
on a regular basis.
We then went for a wander around Matto to look at the Christmas lights.... WELL.... what can I say. They sure do go totally overboard on the lights... seriously! I don't think any other suburb tries quite as hard as these folks... so! I clambered around with my tripod taking photos of most of them within walking distance. It was quite interesting seeing what people would come up with... some boats, some entire roofs covered, and some wooden cut-outs of a hundred elves... Of which I took a photo of Cynthia pretending to be Where's Wally (R)... quite a good shot that one I reckon. Anyways I will upload a selection of the photos later on, when I get time to shrink them to fit and time to upload them (LOTS of time to upload them!!!). Of course, as with everything on this site, nothing happens quickly so yes... I must release things slowly so that people stop looking here... oops. Probably not such a good idea after all. Dribs and drabs.
After wandering around and having everyone stare at me and my tripod (hey... I'll have good photos and everyone else can suffer when they look at their blurry photos) we sat around a bit more waiting for one of the younger cousin's to totally destroy Dai's PS2... it didn't happen (thankfully) but the cousin did get rather smashed in Yocks a few times (it's expected). I don't think I've ever seen someone quite as dedicated to one game as Dai... or maybe I'm overlooking that Tetris Freak video that gets passed around LANs (and is probably on Google Video somewhere...).
After much eating and much more eating and a bit of playing Uno (Simpsons style of course) everyone eventually made it to bed... ahhhhh. Only for the next day to unfold! Yes it was Boxing Day and of course the "celebrations" continue. Got up and dragged Rexie over to Epping to see my Grandmother... and also to
have another Christmas lunch. This time it was the turkey and the ham, but cold - to match the weather
of the day! We were joined by my parents, Bec & Andrew (who have big news... I'm going to be an uncle... and my parents will be grandparents... hah I'm still teasing them :D), Laurie and Shirley, and later on, Geoff, Enid, Alyson and Adam (who also have big news... congrats on the engagement guys!!). Unfortunately Justin wasn't there, because I wanted to see his face when he opened his present - a Peewee Ferris LP. Oh well. I hear when he opened it later on his eyes just lit up and then he ran to his friend's house to show them... w00! Reaction was totally worth it, but pity I didn't get to see it. I didn't really have any other fantastic presents for anyone else, although I did give my dad some Peugeot pepper/chilli grinders in a pair. They rock!
Lunch was nice with plenty of meats and salads, and of course having Rex there made it fun too. Took a few photos, tried to get at least one of everyone but then again so many people are camera-shy when I bring out that camera!! Angie made it along too, which was fantastic. She is quite thin these days but very fit from running around on the farm keeping up with all of the dogs up there at Uralla. I think Nana misses her and her antics a lot, because it's great to have someone to keep company and to take care of, but she really can't handle taking care of her at the moment... *sigh* oh well. Cynthia hopped on the camera and took some really cute shots so they may eventually find themselves up here sometime, too.
One final thing before I march on... We had to try and attempt to catch this Budgie (no it wasn't a smuggled one) which was flying around looking very scared and hungry... unfortunately we couldn't manage to do it (there are just too many trees in the leafy suburb of Epping...), although Andrew didn't really give up for quite a while longer. He was trying seed and a sticky stick (err) covered in seed (I think) to lure it down out from the trees. Poor thing. I don't think it would've lasted very long in the wild...
And now on to PRESENTS! hehe. Go Christmas, it is such a nice time of
the year. The presents I received include: (without counting the ones I gave
to myself haha) the Engrish Book and the A Night on Earth by Crazy Doodle (hehe) CD (which has made it's way into my car) from Rex (woohoo), Danger Mouse DVD boxset and 3D nail art thingy from Andrew & Bec (the nail thing is really cool!), a light which looks like a bluetooth headset from Geoff & Enid, a Sake set (With 5 cups ??) and bottle of 20+ year old sake (it has FLOATIES!! lol - won't be drinking that one any time soon), a polo shirt from Dai (not expecting anything but I really do need things like this to wear to work), a t-shirt from Mr and Mrs Ma, The Chaser annual book from my parents, and I think that is about it... hmm I probably have forgotten something (argh!) but overall a very decent set - cheers guys!
That night, Rex and I returned to good old Matto after a very light dinner to find more food! And I thought I had enough... well no way! They had these nice little pastries which were like shells, but had cream inside. mmm yummo.. and also some crazy jelly which was all kinds of colours (And as a result Mrs Ma didn't like it one bit.. hah so predictable!). I do believe over the next day we went bowling with Em, but details are a bit foggy and I don't think I did all that well... although I think I managed over 100... maybe.. eh. Not my best sport (What is???).
I eventually went home for a couple of days to "bond" with Dad, but it was kinda shortly lived since NYE was coming up! Thankfully I had a few days off from work between Christmas and New Year's, but that also means I am in negative for my annual leave... oh well. It'll just take me ages to accrue more again. On the brighter side I got a tasty fat payout from my previous job :D.
Moving along a bit faster now (oh well It's getting late and I've been at this for 45 minutes now... and heck... I'm hungry! Food is pretty important now y'see...) NYE was pretty fun I must say, but I did get really sick of it all at one point. It was the smoke. OH the smoke.... argh. I just can't stand it. Sorry, but I have no tolerance for it. The second these new anti-smoking laws come in, I will be much happier. Although it will probably push more people outside to smoke, I must stay on topic, yes... Cynthia and I rocked over to Observatory Hill (after I used the M7 again.. hehe. It's getting a bit of use from me until the toll comes back on the 16th of January...) at around 7ish... not too bad an effort, got a good spot with a view of North Syndey, Luna Park and of course the Harbour Bridge. Got some nice snaps (Although a tripod would've been nice, I couldn't bothered bringing it and I thought I'd look stupid, but then other people had them... so eh! NEXT YEAR I WILL BRING IT! Hah.) but a lot of them aren't the best. Still, I have a select number which turned out quite fantastically, so I will upload those. A few eerie ones of the bridge came out quite well too. So anyways we naturally didn't go there by ourselves! We had a few people reserving a spot for us, namely Ivan & Charmayne, Anne, and Daniel & Eugenia. Later on Amanda rocked up, so that was good. Almost the whole gang (OK well not really...) was there, joining in on the fun that was putting up with the smokers. I mean sure, have one... but the problem is once one person stops, another starts...and you basically get this constant stream... Grrr. Nothing I could really do, but oh well, it was nice at any rate!
The trip home was quite long and tedious - I didn't dare go anywhere near those porta-loo things, they are so notorious, and there were lots of weird people around (like this one guy who kept walking up and down the bus waiting ppls and asking if anyone was going to Bondi?... it was quite clear that the Bondi buses do not leave from that stop!). Anyways, after finding a non-packed bus quite a while later (oh yes, there was this guy who kept standing in the middle of the road at Hyde Park trying to get a taxi, and even trying to get a taxi with it's light OFF to let him board... idiot!) we got back to my car at South's Juniors, and got home safely. Ahhhhh. Not a bad night at all. For dinner we had a tuna salad that Rex made, which was good but oh so oily... so at the end we had to wash it down with some banned fanta (By banned I mean Mrs Ma bans it) and some more oily chips! Oh yay for cholesterol.
Ahh yes. What a stinker of a day. I heard it set a record - hotest New Year's Day in ages. Or ever. Something like that... I do believe it was 46 or more out at my place, and 44 at Matto. We went for a trip down the road (oh what a mistake) to get food for Dai... of course nothing is open! Eventually we find the hot bread shop is open so we get 3 chicken rolls and 1 pork roll... with chilli for me! hehe. The pork one was OK I think, not like Cabra but still not a bad meal. The chicken ones were apparently really bad and tasteless... oh well. Should've gone the chilli folks! hehe. We even sat in the bath for a while but it was just so hot that it was pretty hard to escape the heat. We watched the second part of the Karate Kid, but we didn't have the air con on the right setting (hmm well it's not like I own one...) but Dai soon fixed that up. I think he's a bit of a pro with it... although when he drives his car he puts the aircon on maximum all the time... I can't stand it like that!!! So yes that was quite funny, with a few of the best lines from the 80's (Hey it is the 80's? - Dunno, never been attacked by tree -- which aren't necessarily in that order OR from the 2nd part!!). So it was all good. Oh yes, to top it off we had a slurpee, which made the hot day a little cooler for about 5 minutes... we bought Dai one too but he was in one of those kinds of moods so he didn't end up having his... strange boy.
To complete the weekend, a trip to Centennial Park was in order, to feed the wildlife! I couldn't stand sitting around doing nothing for the whole time, so on the last day before work we fed the crazy birds on the pond in the park. I threw some bread in for the ducks but then it disappeared... ehhh I thought. Then I threw some more and discovered there were eels and large goldfish in the dam. Their mouths were so huge and red, it was crazy. So the fight was on, birds Vs fish/eels. I don't know who won, but I know that everyone got a good feed that day. There were other people there too, like this little boy who obviously was there for his first time feeding ducks and was totally scared of them! Poor kid... the ducks really aren't going to go for you, even if you do have tasty stale bread....
Aferwards we headed over just past the University of Sydney to play boardgames at Ivan's mum's place. Not a bad flat I must say, plenty of room inside with several large balconies. We basically played Cranium for most of the night, until we had a bit of pictionary (Which is quite similar) and then I had to go at 10... which means I had to take Cynthia home, too. Eventually got home after midnight (arghh!) but what else could I do. Boardgames are rather addictive!!! Also had a nice pasta/bolognaise dinner courtesy of Ivan (cheers!) which made the night extra good. I really did suck at humming though (I didn't know I sucked THAT badly!) so I hope NEXT time people won't choose me to do it... because they'll never be able to guess the song I don't know the tune to! hah.
It was then Tuesday morning, very early, and I got to bed. I had to get up in a few hours, namely 6 or so. Argh so tired that day - but I live on, to work another day.
Welcome to 2006... oops, bit late.
Recent comments