Malaysian Wife, Australian Life

Meet Abby Lena Laidler, my new niece! Proud big brother, Jaydan (he's so good with her!) " Quick, let's take this one..no one's watching!" "Be cool, be cool...ok quick! let's do it!" Michael's brother, Adam, his partner Amber and their son Jay, welcomed their baby girl 2 days ago after 10 years! She's the 2nd grandchild & the 1st granddaughter of Tom & Imelda. Most people here choose not to know the sex of the baby till they're born so when Abby arrived, everyone's just so overly excited! Just only 1-day old yesterday, she's already got a wardrobe of cute pink clothings from her grandma, who went crazy and filled up her shopping trolley at the kid's deparment. We all agreed Abby's got more clothes than any of us. :p She's gonna be soo spoilt by ALL of us!! I am truly looking forward to be a part of her life! ;)

It's not often that we cross the bridge to get out of the Shire. This is because Michael claims that there's no need to leave cos you can get EVERYTHING you need in his beloved birth place. Of course, I am here to lovingly prove him wrong. There's 2 things that i've been wanting to do lately that's NOT in the Shire - 1) go to IKEA and 2) get kicap manis cap kipas udang. I wanted to go to IKEA because (do we really need a reason to go to IKEA? hehe) well, just to get an idea of what we need for our new house. Id also like to compare prices with stuff in the Shire cos some of IKEA's items can be pretty cheap. We weren't gonna buy anything till we move in but we do need to get stuff for our bathroom reno that we plan to do before moving in. IKEA here is EXACTLY the same as in KL, inside and out. The only upset is that the $1 hotdog here contains beef & pork! boooooooooo! So we did our full IKEA loop and only bought a mirror cabinet for our bathroom whic...

The Pope was here in Sydney last week for the World Youth Day. It was HUGE!! On the nite of the final mass, i think about 1/2 million people gathered and spent the nite under the stars at the Randwick racecourse. I dunno how they did it with the very cold weather and all, but i thought that was pretty amazing. Another thing that amazes me is the fact that these young pilgrims, aged from 13-35, from all over the world (i saw one Malaysian flag in the news at one point!) have such deep passion for their religion and especially for the Pope. These teenagers were going ga-ga over the Pope when they saw him in the Pope mobil during the motorcade and one girl even answered 'anything for the Pope' when asked about the crazy crowd that she had to go through to even catch a glimpse of the Pope. I know nothing much about the whole WYD thingy. The only thing that i was concerned about was the possible delays with trains because of the road closures and all major events happening in th...

Last weekend, Michael and I drove out of the Shire to meet up with our good friends up north in Chatswood - Yuz & Kennedy and Lina & Sanjiv for a lunch get together . We've been planning this get together for quite some time. Lina has been itching to cook good Malaysian food for us which we, of course, politely welcomed with open arms. Most importantly, we've also been wanting to have our very own little Wii tourney to challenge each other ever since we bought the game about a year ago. And so, the moment that we've been waiting for finally arrived. Days leading up to this meet, we've all been intimidating each other with our big talk of supposedly intense practice (or lack thereof :p) to go head-to-head with each other and show off our Wii skills. Michael has been pretty good and did some practice. I was a bit lazy and thought my skills from practising long time ago would be sufficient. I was more excited about the fact that Lina's gonna make us lonton...

It was supposed to be just another weekend down our caravan at Merry Beach. But right from the start, everything about it has been different than normal and very extra 'MERRY' indeed! Of course, we took our new car and it's just so much comfy & smoother drive. My SIL, Vicki decided to tag along. (that's the QUIDDLER game, btw) My MIL & nephew Jaydan, came to visit while on their way to visit Michael's aunty for the school holidays. (the boys coming back from hassling the kangaroos) We finally took our secondhand recliner that we bought from Salvos for 20 bux and it's oh so comfy! And best of all..... Michael & I went on our very first HELICOPTER RIDE...at the caravan!!!!!!! How's that?? Unbelievable! It started like any other typical day at the caravan. Woke up at about 10'ish, had eggs & mushrooms on toast for breakfast, reading magazines catching up on the goss, when we heard a loud roaring sound up in the sky.. ...

   We are still getting used to the fact of having a mortgage and being in debt. From now till settlement date, it's gonna be save save save that every spare penny we've got. I thought i was the frugal one, but Michael is a nazi when it comes to saving $. He's SOO strict! I don't even get play $ anymore! But then even with all the pressure of trying to pay as much deposit as we can for the house, we just had to go and get a new(ish) car as well!!!! Our existing car is a 1980's Toyota Corolla that Michael bought 5 years ago at a bargain price of AUD1000. It's old, small and DIIIIRRRRTY (how i miss my Wira) but it works fine and got us through Canberra & back and the many trips down the caravan. It has served us well and it's good enough for the 2 of us. The original plan was to get a new bigger car when we have kiddies which we plan to have right about now, together with the house. So, new house, new car, new baby rite? But since there's no baby y...