flylikethewind

Dad, Mum, Sis & I visited my aunt's 100 year old mother yesterday at Westmead hospital.
She has been at the hospital for the past 7 days or so - apparently due to heart failure. She has good eyesight and memory and recognised each of us and paused to compliment each of us except my father on how we all look prettier and then she paused as she decided someone is missing and we couldn't work out whom she was referring to... (she couldn't name that person) but we found out she was referring to my boyfriend when she said "where's the person from Cambodia".
Took us all by surprise that she thought of him.

She sneakily hidden away the oxygen mask under the blanket instead of leaving it on. It's OK though I think it's only there in case she needs it. Mum told her to put it closer to her in case she needs it.

She could still eat well, talk well, see well, and has good memory.
Apparently doctors? need to tell the patient's close family members if they suspect that their illness may be terminal .. and it seems like this may be the case and there has been a request for her grandson to visit her from Hong Kong.

I can never tell with patients whether they have a little to go or a long time to stay on earth. There was a short while where she weakened a bit as we gave her a card and I gave her some mini cupcakes. That was just before she made prayers - apparently for us. It really should have been the other way I suppose. My Chinese was so poor I didn't even realise she was praying for us.

I saw a shooting star tonight. The second one in my lifetime. Both times, my boyfriend was next to me but in both cases he didn't see them. The first shooting star I saw was after the Royal Easter Show 2+ years ago (can't remember when) when we were heading back to his home in Cabramatta with his sister and her (now) husband. Even then, no one saw it but me.
The one I saw tonight - I don't blame him for not seeing it, as he was in the driver's seat. This was just off Cumberland Highway and onto Carlingford.

It's been so cold lately. 5 degrees tonight. Brrr. I took a picture of the thermometer when it was 2 degrees the other night. I miss warm weather.

It's been busy lately but I'll update more eventually.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Threw away 160 pens (that ran out of ink) today.
There were more that ran out of ink but they were pretty or too many memories attached so I saved a few.

Spaghetti and chicken and pineapple fried rice and ice cream Sundae at Eastwood on Saturday with my bf makes a pig (me) happy!

Overplayed shop heroes on Facebook on Sunday till 3am trying to get the gold key award.
Will not do that again next Sunday!

I dreamt I got made redundant on Monday morning but for some reason my manager didn't know about it - and I kept the news away from my manager for 2 months and then told her about it a day or two before my last day at work. I didn't do as much of a handover as I should have I think - in my dream anyway. In reality though, manager will always know. Strange dreams.

Bought 3 sets of Winsor & Newton water colour 45 half pans today online - one for Mum, one for sis, one for Mum's friend (but my Mum's friend will pay for it).

Ooooh and I found out my dear friend in Canada got married! I'm happy for her :) Lucky him. I'm blessed to have met such a lovely friend even though with distance means harder to keep in touch. I tend to visit her every 5 years or so overseas! Last time was in Hong Kong, and I got close to meeting up with her last year but only got to her front door (she wasn't home).

Do people really work 14 hour days? I did 11.x and I'm tired already. (although more planned tonight).

I wonder if they meant 14 hours every day, or whether that includes Saturdays and Sundays to make up for the 14 hours average.... or did they mean once in a while they work 14 hours a day?

In the past week I had 2 people come up to tell me that they were doing 14 hour days before they got made redundant (well one of them used to but stopped end of last year).

Our family has no sense of time. 3 out of 4 of us are still awake at 3:51am.

Ironically ... I have a webpage "The Science Of Good Sleep" opened on my other web browser window.

At 3:07am - my Dad is the first to go to sleep tonight.
Followed by me. (right after this blog entry)
Probably followed by sis, then lastly my Mum who's doing the dishes and will have a shower before sleep.

I wonder if other families do something similar on random days like we are doing this random Sunday morning.

And I know that Sam is still up over in his suburb!

Anyway - off now.

Burped a lot today.
Stomach's been misbehaving for a while.
Should get it checked.
Maybe it's the helicobacter pylori which I have had once but the symptoms are very different from the last time.
So hopefully it's something else. Like the potentially half overcooked / half undercooked small piece of chicken that I made myself around a week before NY.
However, I thought it was auto fixed the following week because I felt almost 100% when I went to Sam's bro's baby shower get-together where we had bbq.
But it's been a little bit unpleasant the last couple of days - lots of burping. Sometimes almost nauseous.
I guess if it doesn't heal itself in a week or so I will see a doctor.

Zzz

Boy I hope I'm not auto spamming anyone's inboxes!

Just randomly scribbling into here with boring stuff.
Just for the sake of scribbling.

NYE was spent at Parra shopping during the day and dinner at Sun Ming Chinese cafe place.
I generally watch the fireworks from home. I accidentally sent my parents to Castle Hill Main Street to watch the 9pm NYE fireworks - but I didn't realize it was a TV screen showing the fireworks at the city instead of actual fireworks. So Mum came home fireworks hungry so Dad drove her to watch the midnight city NYE fireworks at Balmain.
It looks like they could only see the fireworks near the top of the bridge and above - so not the best view but it was very peaceful apparently.

3rd Jan Saturday was spent shopping and lunch at Liverpool Shopping with Sam. Shopping for baby shower present for his bro's 1 month old baby Patrick.
Then we dropped off at his cousin's after lunch to pick up chairs from his cousin's house and then headed to his bro's home.
We helped set up the chairs/ tables whilst the others attended to setting up the bbq for a lamb. (many flies went for the lamb - I am glad I don't like lamb much in general :) so no fly-contaminated food for me :D)
They hired a jumping castle for the kids to play - but the kids played dangerously - they managed to climb to the top of the jumping castle. IF they fell the wrong way and hit this metal thing - it'd be pretty bad. So scary.... One little kid got hurt and was crying - I think maybe just too crowded inside the jumping castle and cos he was smaller than the other kids it's probably easy to get hurt.
This person (Sok Chea) - his baby was so cute it knew how to smile and shown a lot of expressions.
I met Sam's bro's wife's parents for the first time - his mum seemed friendly and nice.

8th Jan Thursday our manager visited us at our Sydney office from Perth. He had a two day workshop here. I was 10 minutes late to work despite every attempt to be on time. (I only live 2 min drive from work) / 25 min walk.
To my surprise the whole team was already there and chatting with my manager just inside the entrance of our block - except for Belinda (whom the manager forgotten to invite.. perhaps our team was just too big or she got overlooked as a part-timer or simply a human mistake).
Was feeling pretty sad for Belinda that the manager forgotten to invite her - because she would have loved to have been there. But having 3 kids and work from home, it'd be impossible for her to arrange someone to babysit the kids in such short notice.
I think I was too shy? to approach the group to say hi to the boss or afraid I'd possibly ruin the atmosphere - so I just went to my desk and chatted to anyone I haven't seen for a while and went back to work.

Rosy (one of my team members) came over with the manager and asked me if I would like to join them for coffee. I shaked hands with the manager but kind of declined the coffee then thought what a bad move. The whole team was having coffee with the manager and I declined - he must think poorly of me hahah. I don't like coffee and I'm not a social butterfly so my instinct was to decline.

Struggled a bit to get to work as the power plug wall wasn't working so I played musical desks for a bit, then eventually logged a ticket with the site operations team to assist.

We had a team dinner at West Pennant Hills Sports club. I got there 6pm sharp for drinks but everyone was there before me cos I went home first and most likely everyone got bored of staying in the office.
They wouldn't let me in though without a membership number or knowing someone who's a member. It ended up no one in my team was a member and the receptionist picked on a random member who happened to be a good samaritan to sign in on behalf of me. Perhaps the rest of the team are not locals so they allow them to enter without joining.
The food was great there - all the guys had beef, the rest had schnitzel (a lady & I).
Peter Mac offered me a lift home via his new 2015 VW which smelt of fresh leather!

10th Jan Sat - had hot pot Mmm at Sam's house with Sam and his sis's husband. Watched him play his new games / went shopping for cake ingredients and ended up buying a mud cake from Woolies and Fruit cake from woolies instead - cheaper and already made.
Bought pancake mix which we used to make pancake :) Yum.
Then watched Masterchef - old series (an episode where they were cooking brains.. with Merium .. Callum.. and others) - and eventually went to Carlo village for dinner - rice noodle at the tables opposite the Chinese supermarket.
Got dropped off at home.

11th Jan Sun - stayed home mostly but went out for dinner with Family. Tried a dish we haven't tried there before (Fook Kien Fried rice) at Eastwood Chiu Kong? (can't spell).. just another Chinese cafe/food place.
It was ok - same sauce as usual - but they had fish in it which wasn't fishy so it was ok. And no real meat in it.

Had fun playing with Mum's Samsung phone taking photos and adding bows and crown images to her photos.
Ipad camera's more fun though with it's kaleidoscope, mirror, negative? or xray functions. I love the mirror function cos I can make myself look like an alien or a conjoined twin :P

Does anyone want to try and beat my high score of 194 ?

http://www.pennypinchersgame.com.au/

It's a hungry jacks game where food falls from the sky and you have to catch as many as you can. Whatever food items gives you the highest points I suppose :)

If you come first by the end of the week (I think Monday?), you'll get a $100 JB-hifi voucher.
If you come 2nd-5th you get Hungry jacks whopper meal vouchers ^^

On Monday two people hacked though I think. They got crazy scores like 1000004 or similar.

I don't think I'll ever come 1st-5th - currently 8th. This is because last week the highest scores seem to be 1k+.

I'll play for fun though.

I should work though. Boring work .

Thank you Vive for arranging the Christmas get-together :) Thank you everyone for organising the food!

Being disorganised as usual, I think I stayed up till 4 something am or 5 something am wrapping gifts prior to the actual day. I did a last minute shopping for BBQ pork/ Roast pork and Christmas gift bags and writing cards and ended up an odd 45 minutes late to the Christmas lunch. I left part of the presents behind by accident.
Once I arrived and everything was sorted, the stress has died ^^.

Fortunately, Coco arrived at the same time as me (with her baby boy Samuel's head under her dress *laughs*) and Bec arrived not long after my arrival... so I wasn't the only one that was running late ^^

As tired as I was, it was good seeing everyone again and having the little bundles of cuteness entertain us as always, as well as entertaining stories that everyone had to share. Thanks also to UD whom helped pass dishes and food - otherwise my shaky hands from lack of sleep would have been way too obvious :D.

I was spoiled yesterday - so thank you all for the gifts.

I can't wait to decorate the house garden with solar lights. Got to love Christmas.

I also can't wait to try the WII game but I will probably attempt to try and make some floor space (ie. tidy some parts of the house) first. Thank you Bec!

Thanks for the trouble of getting me a crimping tool and clips Vive :)
Despite having some challenges with the CAT6 crimping tool, I managed to learn how to strip the cable, and after some sore fingers and several inches of cut cable, I finally got it working :D No need for an engineering degree after all :P Youtube has the answers (proud) :D

Must have been almost a year of disconnecting from the internet due to a broken RJ45 plug and I didn't want to go through setting up a cable from one side of the house to another so the crimping tool was awesome. I am far from gentle to everything that I own so it's inevitable that I will break the clip again so the crimping tool is the best solution.

Thank you for all the chocolates too - it will probably last me a few months!