I am now a quarter of a century old. I remember one time when I first started work at my company, a colleague remarked how young I was to start working... and said the same thing again when I announced that I was getting married. I don't like it when people pass comments like that, what kind of response are they hoping they get from me? I only have one answer for a question like that: Yes, I suppose I am. She would then say condescendingly, you are young now but once you hit 25 and over, you'll start to feel it. So here I am now at 25. What is it I am suppose to feel again?

We had lunch with our couple friends today after church. They are very nice people... pleasant, helpful, generous... But somehow, something isn't clicking firmly in place yet. There are still moments in our conversation filled with short awkward silences... times when we are not quite sure what to talk about next... instead of a smooth-flowing conversation, I rack my head trying to think of something interesting to talk about... settling down in Australia, church activities, family back in Malaysia, places to go for holiday... but this shouldn't be the way, should it? I really hope we find something that clicks us together eventually soon. They are very nice people and we do value having them as friends in our new country. But sometimes I fear that they might soon become bored with our company... heck, sometimes I'm tempted to feel bored too... but I try not to let myself dwell on thoughts like that.

What to do with all these cherries??? Make Cherry Clafoutis!!! It's very easy... Click here: Cherry Clafoutis by Bill Granger

Raspberry and cream cheese triangle pastries, mmmm... Lucky for MH and lil' bro that I had a whim to bake something up last night for supper!

We had a lovely time yesterday at IKEA with D&G whom we met at our church connect group. They just bought a car and were planning to drive down to IKEA to buy some furnishings for their house and invited us to go with them. We didn't intend to buy anything at all but ended up spending $70 (phew!). I told MH that we mustn't buy on impulse, but these were all little things we needed to get sooner or later... a rubbish bin, dish rack, placemats. We also bought some Christmas decorations for our Christmas tree (yes, we have a tree... we bought for $5 at a garage sale). MH insisted that it was very important for a Christmas tree to have lights, so we bought those as well. We spent the whole day shopping together and only reached home at 5.00pm. Today, they picked us up to go to church and we had brunch together afterwards. We wanted to find a nice dim sum place to eat but we were all not familiar with the area, so we ended up eating MacDonalds (much to the delight of the two men...

Grilled tomato & cheese sandwiches for lunch today.

Remnants of my yummy banana & strawberry smoothie... we gulped it down as a healthy post-dinner-snack... very filling! *burp*

We brought in the final load of furniture on Sunday... 1 dining table, four dining chairs, 1 coffee table, 1 sideboard, plus a swivel chair... a great deal at only $180 for the entire lot. We bought it second hand from this foreign uni student who was going back to Canada after completing her studies. With the couch costing only $10, we actually furnished our entire living / dining area for less than $200!!! MH is so amazed and blown away that I managed to accomplish all this. I spent Monday afternoon arranging the furniture and setting everything up. The place looks quite nice now. (Check out the link in the blog title)

It's such a treat to have a nice leisurely Saturday (big difference from Saturdays in Singapore which were packed with activities or at our cafe). Aaahhh... the luxury of sleeping in till 10.00am... This morning, I convinced MH to sit with me and watch Dances with Wolves... one of my favourite epic films. He was wary of getting sucked into some boring drama at first, but in the end he had no regrets. After the movie, we went to do our usual weekly grocery shopping. We racked up a little more than our usual bill because we decided to buy some extra pillows for guests and 4 bottles of wine which were on special... only between $6.00 to $7.00 per bottle. After putting the groceries back home, we decided to walk down to the park near our home and explore our neighbourhood further. Most of the shops were already closed, but at least we could get an idea of what other shops there were in our vicinity. Tonight, we had leftover spaghetti bolonaise for dinner... I put in whole peppercorns l...