Cupcake Memories: Life in Sydney, Australia

Food for thought: Pride eats us up. Some people are full of pride, too full if I may say so. Some grow up and deliberately lose their pride and became humble. Sometimes I get too proud of myself too and I especially hate it when it showed while I speak, not always but at times. By the time I realized what I had just said, I feel horrible.

I constantly remind myself to stay humble and be mindful of how I speak. Be humble, be humble, be humble.

It is a blessing indeed that we happen to choose living in this area because there are always some activities happening for kids and family. It is really great for toddlers and preschool age kids, something to keep them occupied with. Not only that it is great for the moms too, meeting other moms and all.

To be honest when I first visited this suburb 7 years ago, my first thought was “where is this place, it’s sooooo far away from everything!”. Gosh, how wrong was I to even think that. Look at it now, thank goodness for the developments throughout the years. It has become such a lovely place to live in and I am just so happy we decided to live on this side of the suburb where all the facilities are rather than the opposite suburb where I initially thought was more happening.

I must admit that before we had DD, I hardly ever visit the library simply because I was so used to getting information I wanted, via the internet. Moreover where I used to live, the libraries were not equipped with the latest technology.

However all that changed after the newest library was opened at our area. I love how we could self issue and renew books, etc and a receipt would be printed out via a thermal printer which looks similar (if not already) to an Epson tm-t88iv model except that the print out is in all black. I also love the fact that we could just drive through to return the books, it’s so super convenient.

It’s Saturday, January 15th, the first half of the first month of the year! It’s gonna be the same routine again. Weekends go run errands or shop for food and household items – gee, how many household goods do we actually need?

Or if we were to getaway, it’ll be the beach, again *yawn* but no thanks, not in this hot and humid weather. Wish we could just pop over to my closest friends’ place or a family member’s home just to catch up and have home cooked dinner or something. Sigh but none lives here. Sad story.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we have got mostly all the basic household goods that we need. Only thing we would most likely to do is upgrade some existing goods to a larger capacity one.

Take our fridge for example. Sometimes we did think about replacing our current fridge with one that has a water dispenser. But then again, it would require an occasional replacement of 4396841 filters parts if it is a Whirlpool brand.

Perhaps that isn’t hard to do but I am unsure if it would be costly to maintain such a fridge. I remember many years ago, my family used to have such a fridge and it was really, really when you have many kids in the home who is always thirsty. It also lessens the need to open the fridge door frequently.

I have been so out of touch with how things get done in the corporate world, the hierarchy, red tapes and all the technology that comes with it. It has been more than a decade since my last 9-5 job.

If you ask me now what is data center virtualization, I would not have a clue. So outdated am I. And to think that I even considered returning to the workforce! Though not impossible but I guess I will need a lot of time to readjust and get myself used to today’s office technology and systems.

Well unless I do something completely different that only requires labour, like fruit picking?

These days it is quite common to know of at least one friend who has obtained her/his online degree while juggling between work and being a parent. It is no easy feat. However, thanks to the many online universities, what was just a dream is now a reality for most people.

Anyone could still pursue a degree no matter how busy and the best part is not having to leave home for it. It doesn’t cost a fortune to take up online studies. There are affordable online universitites such as the Western Governors University (WGU) that charges more affordable tuition fees than other online universities.

The reason WGU makes their online tuition and program fees affordable is because they are a non-profit and fully accredited online education institution. It is also their commitment to expand access to cost-effective higher education for working adults and all individuals regardless of income, background and geographic location.

There is no harm checking out WGU’s website to see what they have to offer, fees, testimonials and such. To anyone pursuing or looking to pursue an online degree, I wish you all the very best.

We see garage sales happening so very often everywhere including our neighbourhood. Some of whom we knew, moved interstate. I wonder how much they had to pay for cross country movers to transport their belongings.

I remember we had to pay the movers over $400+ just to transport very few items within a 20km radius. It was a two hour job with two men helping to load and unload from the supplied truck.

This time if we move again, we have so many more things to shift especially heavy ones. Moving house is a scary thought especially to interstate.

Times like this I wish I could speak a proper sentence of Mandarin, or at least understand it. Not being able to converse in Mandarin was never a problem in KL as most people would comprehend Cantonese or worse come to worse, Bahasa.

Not so here. When people asked me for directions or anything else in Mandarin, I’d be in a total loss. Firstly, I could prolly only understand one word out of everything the person told me. Secondly, I could only speak two or three words, not enough to form a sentence.

Today, another person spoke to me in Mandarin. I had no idea what she was talking about most of the time. Anyway, she wanted me to help her make the paper hat craft for her grandson, which I did without hesitation of course. In the end, her daughter showed up and became the translator. I got her to tell her mother that I am a Chinese from Malaysia but I only speak Cantonese.

It amazes me that some people who speak absolutely no English, only Mandarin alone, yet they are so brave to venture out in a foreign country. There was once a 70+ grandma asked me for direction at a train station, I assumed it was direction coz she was pointing. Unfortunately I didn’t understand a word she said nor where she wanted to go.

Bottom line is, I really wish my secondary school had offered POL class. I did sign up for it but they cancelled all POL classes altogether.

There are many scientific advancements that I admire. Once of them is DNA testing which is so useful in many aspects especially crime scene. I believe I have read somewhere that a wrongly jailed person was finally freed after a DNA test proved he was not guilty of the crime.

How about paternity test? DNA testing has also helped missing or abandoned persons to reunite with their families. The list goes on and on. I just think the discovery of DNA is one of the most wonderful thing to happen in Science.