Eileen yesterday was asking me whether my blog was dead… So… I better start reviving it… Actually there were many times I wanted to blog, but whenever I logged in… the urge flew away as I was logging in…

Anyway… I made tarts today!!! A looooong time since I baked. I think at least 3-4 years. Chance upon this website which shows really pretty and delicious recipes and that is how it begins…

Went to Cold Storage to grab the ingredients for the tart and i spent SGD25 on the ingredients alone… I should be saving money instead of spending money since my August pay is going to be cut by10%!!! Ughhhh……. I’m going to feel poor…

Back to my “tart adventure”… It’s really tiring… and I do feel very very helpless when I was making the tart just now. Firstly because I have never make crust before and the instructions were not really clear. Secondly I think my hands are really like my legs. I have coordination problem… or I’m really not good at cooking…

Making the crust is really tiring… and luckily sister came to do a QC for me and she realise I didn’t add enough butter… Phewww… Anyway photos to show the preparation of tart making… taken my Nick, my bro-in-law.

Rolling the crust.

Posing with 弟弟。。

After preparation… here comes the washing…

I really don’t like to do the washing part. After the preparation and you saw the mountain of plates and bowls… I will ask what the hell did I do all this for???

Twenty – thirty minutes later…

My delicious looking tart…

The taste of the tart……..

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.

.

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It taste like quiche…. but I put too much bacon so it’s a bit salty… Ahhh…

Or it will be fabulousss…. too bad…

29th June at around 8 plus going 9, my mom came running into my room with a large bouquet of flowers from Xun…

And I took the flowers out from the bouquet since I want them to live longer… but they didn’t…

Heard this song over the radio yesterday and yes, it’s too pretty thus it needs to be published…

Ohmmmmmmmmmmm…….. I want to sleep…

Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

有时候太坚强 笑容却填不满眼眶
越是想要隐藏 歌声就唱的更响亮
直到入到心底最深处 
你不要追问我 还缺了些什麽
每个人都有梦 幸福总站在最远方
心中越是渴望 越是不敢伸手拥抱
谁的心是我最後一站

我强问我自己 现在还没有个答案
我不是你想像那麽勇敢
多想让你保护能流泪一场
让我放下武装 像个孩子一样
单纯的把爱情放在你心上

每个人都有梦 幸福总站在最远方
心中越是渴望 越是不敢伸手拥抱
谁的心是我最後一站
我强问我自己 现在还没有个答案
我不是你想像那麽勇敢
多想让你保护能流泪一场
让我放下武装 像个孩子一样
单纯的把爱情放在你心上

我不是你想像总是扮演坚强
多想让你知道我也要个伴
放下讨厌武装 像个孩子一样
单纯的把爱情放在你心上

我不是你想像的那麽勇敢

。。。虽然我很想勇敢一点。。。

Time to finish up the last day of Tasmania since everyone keeps reminding me that the story is not complete. BUT… I think i have kind of forgotten what did i do that day….

Let me recall… we woke up at around 9am, had the leftover dinner as our breakfast, check out of the service apartment and the receptionist recommend us to check out the seaport and Cataract gorge. Actually we didn’t really plan on what we want to do at Launceston since it will be a half day tour as we’re flying out at around 3pm.

Anyway we followed the lady advise and drove straight to Seaport first. It was a clear and sunny day. The houses by the seaport are really pretty! The architecture is modern and nice and the air is fresh and crisp! After walking up and down the broadway, we drove straight to Cataract Gorge. The gorge is smack right in the middle of the city. It’s really interesting that mother nature is just right next door.

We parked our car at the carpark and was about to pay for the carpark pee at this pay as you park machine and this guy called out to us that he still got 2 hours left on his carpark ticket. So we took the ticket slip from him and thanks him! That definitely save us 3-4 bucks on the parking fee. =)

We walked towards the entrance and there’s a chairlift which read “the longest chairlift in the world” and of course we must take it! Paid around AUD15 per person to take a to and fro ride. Anyway the chairlift looks kinda dangerous and old but I was too excited to think about it. Each chairlift can seat 2. 

Anyway the gorge is really beautiful. It was very serene and peaceful. The chairlift moves at a good pace for us to take in the scenery. From the top we can see people exercising, walking or a whole group of students having their outing. There are many temperate trees at the gorge and most of it have turn yellow and red. Thus it definitely portray the autumn feeling which I was looking for. I brought home a few dried autumn leaves to remember the beautiful gorge and trees.

After walking around the gorge, we took the chairlift back to the base and drove back to the city for lunch. Park our car at another pay as you park carpark and went walking around to look for food. Walked past many restaurant but they were not open and we don’t have any craving.

We wanted to eat asians but none were in sight but i remembered walking behind this shopping mall and there’s a push cart selling spud and many people were eating it. Actually spud = potato and they staff lots of things into the potato. But it don’t look like a full meal so we give it a miss and in the end we ate sushi – Australia style. We sat by the shops along the busy shopping street and do people watching.

After the sushi… i’m still hungry and i dont feel like doing any shopping and soooo… we went back to look for the spud! It was good la… should have eaten that as my lunch instead. There’s bacon, coleslaw, sour cream, cheese and onion in the potato. The spud is fluffy and hot and it’s sooo satisfying to eat that! I’m craving for it as I’m typing this… hai…

After the spud we continue with the aimless walking and in the end we landed at the carpark.  Xun was tired by the time we reach the car and he had a short nap in the car while i played with my camera till the battery went dead. Once he woke up, we drove straight to airport and say goodbye to Tasmania. 

Still remember that before my trip, my colleague told me that Tasmania is like  a little Switzerland and that makes me all hype up and excited. It sure feels like little Switzerland but Switzerland is still even more beautiful with all the cottages, alps and beautiful scenery everywhere. But overall, it’s an interesting trip with hiccups along the way and we really get to know each other better through this trip.

That’s all for the tasmania trip… my mission is completed! Till then…

We drove out

The little girl beside me is in love but she dont dare to dive into it because she’s afraid bah. Looks very similar to what I’ve been for many years till recently. It take a lot of courage to reach where i am right now because I feel that i’m totally out of my comfort zone.

I laugh and cry at que… that’s one thing which i’m still not use to. I get affected easier now.

I want to sleep…

Let me try to recall what I did on that day… Morning we woke up and head downstair of our guesthouse to have our breakfast. But when we head out, the restaurant is still locked. The other couple who is staying beside us were downstair too. After 5 mins of waiting, our host, Lauren I believe opened the door for us and tadah…. a good hot breakfast is served to us. =)

There’re many selection for breakfast, too bad we dont have too much time as we need to rush for our glow worm tour at 10am. Anyway I love the guesthouse… if you are ever going to Mole Creek, please book a night here. 

After the good and heavy breakfast, we drove to Marakoopa cave which is 15 mins drive away. Bought our tickets and drove up a small hill to wait for our tour guide to bring us into the tour. We are all bundled up as the cave temperature is aroaund 7-9 degree celcius. Anyway it’s cold that we can see mist when we breathe.

Our group consists of a family of Hongkonger, a lone Canadian lady and an Australian family who brought their baby along! I’m rather amaze that they brought their baby along. That baby should be around 4-5 months old and the cave is cold. But the baby slept through it anyway. But I’m really amaze with caucasians. The Chinese will want their babies to stay at home until around 7-8 months then bring them out to shop or what. But this is a 4-5 months baby inside a cold and damp cave… *applause…

Anyway back to the cave, the guide brought us in and introduce the formation of the crystals inside the cave. But that’s not the exciting part… what I’m more interested is the glow-worm! It’s pretty laaaa.. like small stars twinkling up in the sky. But it’s cave in fact. The tour guide switched off the light in the cave and it was totally dark. Can’t see anything at all… and at that moment your sense our hearing does get more sensitive. BUt that darkness is scary… I can picture what it feels like to be blind through that experience… you feel helpless.

After the 45 mins cave tour, we drove straight to cradle mountain. Another 1.5 hr drive to reach the mountain. This time it’s moiiii driving… lalalalalaaaa…. i only drive during the day. Hahahahaaa…. It’s a nice drive up there anyway, one thing that keeps bugging me is whether the petrol in the car is sufficient to reach the place because we are left with less than half a tank and we got 77km+ to drive. But bless us, there’s a small petrol kiosk up the mountain to fill up the thirsty tank.

We bought two sandwich from the cafe and pack them for our dove lake walk. The total distance is around 6km long and the expected time to complete the walk will be around 2 hr. Anyway it was freezing cold up on cradle mountain. It was drizzling when we reached there and the sky is so grey…  

Oh the rain in Australia is so different from those in Singapore. The rain over there is very fine and small droplet. A bit like mist, on the otherhand, Singapore rain is machiam one big droplet of water. 

OK back to my dove lake walk… two words to describe it… tiring, beautiful. The walk is loooong la… OK i admit i’m not a very healthy person so maybe that’s why it’s tiring to me. When we first started the walk, the path is really easy to walk. Wooden plank all lay out flat and nice. We just walked through trees and trees and trees… Nope wrong, we’re walking in between trees and water. On my left is dense forest while on my right is the clear lake. 

So we walked and walked and walked. But it started drizzling when we reached the halfway mark. Luckily I got a hooded jacket and is able to keep my head wet. But as the rain gets heavier… the walk gets more tedious. There’s no more wooden plank, instead it’s gravel road with lots of rocks and stones. So it get pretty tedious for me with the rain and the terrain. In the end bf has to pulled me along some route because it’s just sooo tiring. I was feeling so hot that i unzipped my jacket and pull out  my shawl. And I just keep praying that the wooden plank will appear again and I can forget about the gravel road… but it didn’t come very soon… Ughhhh…

Anyway most importantly, I completed my walk. Phewww…. damn happy la. Because if i dont’ finish it, there’s no short cut for me to reach the final destination… unless… i swim via the lake?! Hahahahahaaaa…

We completed our walk in 1 hr 50 mins. It will be shorter if I had walked faster and stop Oooo-ing and Aaaah-ing over the scenery la. Keekekekkeeee…

We took the shuttle bus back down to the carpark where we parked our car and we drove straight to Launceston. It’s around 1hr plus drive. This time, bf drives instead because the sky is turning dark. Drove down the windy hilly road and back to long and straight highway. We reached our service apartment soon and it was BIG la. There’s 3 rooms, a living room and dining room, a kitchen and a big jacuzzi. Nice place!!! TOo big for two people but still it’s nice! Lalalalaaaa…

THe whole house is done in Japanese style with Kimono hanging on walls etc. We had italian takeaway that day, pizza and pasta… and I drove in the city because bf dont like to do so and I tried doing a parallel parking twice before I manage to get my car into the lot… -_-”

OK that’s all for day 3… feeling lazy to continue… stay tune for day 4 aka last day in Tasmania. Bleahhhhh

Day 2… Woke up at 8 plus to a quiet room. As usual, the faint sound of wave can be heard even in our room. Started packing our bags and decide to check out the surroundings before we checked out of our cabin. 

We drove down to the beach and the view that greets me was preeeeeeeety… *pardon my lack of vocab, but everything seems to be pretty to me over that 4 days. In fact pretty is the wrong word, the correct word should be serene and peaceful… It’s actually like a lake or a bay… wait till i upload the pictures.

After the view of the bay, we drove to the reception to check out our room. Bf got off the car to check out while I stayed in the car. Anyway the lady at the reception refunded us the ghost tour $$$ as it was not charged to the credit card. Ask her for a good place to have breakfast as we were sooo hungry and she recommended us a cafe which was just situated outside the compound. The name of the restaurant was Eucalypt. Sounds almost similar to someone’s nickname, minus the -us.

We ordered the bacon, eggs and tomato chutney served on baguette.  Guess one will never think of eating bacon and eggs on a baguette. But it was delicious anyway… After the sumptuous meal, we drove down to Oatland. It is a small town in Tasmania famous for its sand stoned buildings and windmill.

The drive down is looooooong. We need to retrace from Port Arthur to Hobart and then finally to Oatland. As we were not on schedule when we start our day, it was kinda late by the time we reached Oatland.  Around 1 plus when we reached the sleepy town.

It’s a really small town. Just one main road with shop-houses and quaint buildings outlining it. Took some quaint pictures of the mill and sand stone houses. Also tried climbing up the mill via the steep almost vertical staircase but the top level that greets us was disgusting. Bf was the first to go up and i was behind him. Once he reached the top stairs, he just made a U-turn and said “dont bother…”

It’s super dirty and disgusting la… spider webs everywhere and bees flying around! If not, the view should be pretty nice. After managing to get out of the mill alive, we head back to the car and decide to drive straight to Mole Creek to go for the glow worm tour at Marakoopa underground river cave at 4pm. But since we started out our day late… we didn’t manage to get there on time. 

Anyway side track… the GPS direct us to some gravel road and we drove on gravel road for like more than 30km or issit 60km??? Hmmmm… but anyway the scenery that greets us along the gravel road drive was totally different from the greenery and autumn scenery. Everywhere looks dry and bare. Heavy logging can be seen from the bare grounds with tree stump and heavy truck driving past us with logs on it.

We reached Mole Creek but GPS has no record of our Mole Creek Guesthouse on its map. So we really literally open our eyes really big to look for my guesthouse. I called it my guesthouse because bf dont want to stay at that place at all at first. But too bad, all the places he wanted was occupied… then toooo bad. Muahahahahahaaaa… I chose the honeymoon room and it’s such a sweet room la! Mole creek guesthouse’s service is GOOD. I love the homemade cookie that’s in the room and the room is clean, warm and toasty. And the breakfast is very very good too… *i’m hungry thinking abt the omelet now….

OK anyway we finally found our guesthouse and checked in. Then we decide to drive down to the cave to try out our luck whether the 4pm tour which we missed was the last tour of the day. And indeed it was the last tour. So we had to drive back and along the way, I asked bf to stop the car to let me take picture of the cow gazing in the field. 

As the mole creek guesthouse restaurant was not open on Tuesday since it’s autumn, we had to head to Mole Creek Hotel for dinner. We ordered beer to warm ourselves too as it’s extremely cold at Mole Creek. Bf ordered silverside with chips and salad while i ordered crumb cutlet with chips and salad too. My cutlet sucks… eeee… and we had a hard time wondering what’s silverside because at first we thought it’s fish but after tasting it, it’s red meat. Anyway to bf that’s reading this… it’s actually beef. Extracted from wiki: Silverside is a cut of beef from the hindquarter of a cow, just above the leg cut.

After the dinner we head back to the room as there’s nothing much to do in the sleepy town where everything closes at 6pm. So we went back to….

Sleep.

I guess I will remember this day for the rest of my life unless the same incident happened again…

Well, you must be guessing what did I experience again??? A bat flying into my room again?!

Nope…

I miss my plane…

Yes you read it right, I miss the plane out to Tasmania… We are suppose to check in 45mins before the flight at 1305 but at 1305 I’m still stuck in some train station… or issit the cab? The failed attempt to rush to the airport… And Australia cab is damn EXPENSIVE la… that cab fare cost AUD50. But that’s small money compared to the amount which bf paid for the next flight out to Tassie… It cost AUD300+ to take the next flight out… That’s LOW COST BUDGET marketing… the nearer it is to the flight, the more expensive it is…

Anyway… thinking that we finally get the ticket out to Tassie, I thought I can enjoy the rest of my day…

BUT… suayness… seems to stuck to both of us the whole day. When we first purchased the air ticket from Jetstar, we bought the 5.30pm flight but requested to be on stand by for the 4.30pm flight just in case some couple (like the both of us) decide to be on no show for the flight. The lady told us to be back at 3.55pm to check whether there’s any seats for us. So at 3.50pm we queued up patiently and crossing my fingers damn hard that there’re 2 seats available for us…  *in such a rush because we had already booked our hotel stay and a ghost tour at 8pm.

Anyway my crossing of fingers does work because we manage to get two tickets up the 4.30pm flight.

However… lady luck seems to be playing a joke on us… we check in and ran for the gate but many passengers are still around. And i thought it should be quite normal because the previous time i flew to Sydney, the flight was delayed too… And so we waited for another 30-45 mins and finally a Jetstar spokesman came and announce to the crowd that the flight for 4.30pm is unserviceable and they flight will be delayed to 7.30pm… I want to go F*ck at the moment I heard that news… what a great day…

We went up and asked the guy whether there’s any empty seat out for the 5.30pm flight but the guy kept saying no, it was full. And we told him that we had bought the firm ticket for 5.30pm but was on standby for the 4.30pm flight. He told us to head back upstairs to query about the status. And so… it was a mad rush to run upstairs to check on whether there’s any empty seats around for us. It was already 5pm then and the next flight out is 5.30pm. The same lady was really nice to us and help us to get the secured seats on the 5.30pm flight and at last.. we finally flew out at around 6pm…

When we reached Hobart airport, it was already very dark and we definitely missed out on our ghost tour which was scheduled at 8.3opm… *hai…

Anyway we drove out to Port Arthur and we had booked a night at Steward Bay Lodge. It’s a really nice self contained cabin, the only bad thing is the heater. The cabin is coooold… but everything is very clean and you can hear the sound of the wave as you turn off your light and take note of the environment. It’s so quiet that you can hear a pin dropped.

We drove for 1.5hr from Hobart to Port Arthur. Luckily bf was driving because I have very bad night blindness… I can’t drive at night, my judgement skill dropped to zero at night. And as usual, Australia roads are without headlight. The only headlights you will see is when you drive past a town or at round about… And so we drove and by the time we reached the cabin, it’s around 9pm. We were hungry and cold and decide to head out to look for food… But a part of me know that we won’t be able to find any because along the way, not a single shop was opened… And yes my instinct was right…

And driving at night… is dangerous… not because of the lack of street lamps… more because of animals… Possum, wombat, wallabies etc. came out at night to cross the light… many times I spotted them by the side of the road as we drove past. A few times, bf avoided them and spare the lives of these small animals but one small wallaby got killed as we were driving out to look for food. Still remember the scene… the wallaby was suddenly in full sight on the right of the car and next a bang… on the left side, I can see a few of them all frightened by the light from the car… I do feel guilty then somehow that wallaby died. If we didn’t drive out, it won’t be dead… hai…

Oh and we didn’t manage to find any food for that night. In the end… my dinner was Starburst gummy snake. Luckily I bought 2 packets when I was at the airport…

What a eventful day isn’t it?! More updates coming soon. Dear bf is snoring away now… hahahahaha… I’m so going to wake him up now! Till then…

- Nil -

P.S: Counting down to see Eucalyptus. 9 more days…