Here are some photos from my last trip to Melbourne for my graduation.

The Melbourne Aquarium

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I’m not really that into chocolate, especially when it’s a whole lot of it. Between Lindt Cafe and Laurent, I prefer Laurent.

Chocolate tart from Lindt Cafe (more crust, less chocolate please…)

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In my 4.5 years of studying in Melbourne, I had never been on the Great Ocean Road. So I decided that it was definitely something I should do during this visit. And because I didn’t want too drive, we went with Go West. The tour was as I expected it really… I’m not really that into seeing rocks and stuff, but it  provided some nice scenaries.

Bell’s Beach

The Go West tour bus

The start of the Great Ocean Road

Koala spotting

Apollo Bay

12 Apostles

Loch Ard’s Barge

London Bridge

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Visit to the Werribee Open Range Zoo. Worth it to fork out a little more money and go for the open vehicle safari rather than the free safari.

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Delicious (and cute) mini cupcakes from Little Cupcake as mentioned in my Brunch-ing entry (Clockwise from top left: chocolate with cream cheese icing, cookies & cream, chocolate mint, coconut, raspberry with white chocolate icing (center))

One of my all time favourite things — “rain drops on roses and whiskers on kittens” — is going for brunch. It might sound a little luxurious but believe me it’s not. I’m not talking about doing it every day or week, but now and then – it’s really fun AND SATISFYING (when it’s good of course). I wished I had started this brunching thing earlier but Fi and I only started last year and then we started dragging Annie along, and sometimes Grace as well. There are so many to visit and so little time. But anyway, so far I’ve only got 3 that’s worth talking about.

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Number 1. The Quarter, Degraves Street (off Flinders Lane), Melbourne CBD.

This is the usual favourite place. It’s simple. It’s convenient. It tastes good. The Quarter is your good ol’ fashion cafe that serves breakfast and lunch. Their breakfast menu has all the basic breakfast favourites like bacon and eggs, eggs benedict, omelet, buttermilk pancakes etc., and also some less conventional ones but I don’t really look at those. My usual choice at The Quarter is eggs benedict with (extra hash brown) which uses a toasted turkish bread base instead of the traditional english muffin base but the turkish bread is exactly why I have these eggs benedict, nice an crispy!  I’ve also tried their big breakfast which was ok but nothing special, and buttermilk pancake which Fi loves but I think they weren’t actually all that great – it was a little heavy to me, I prefer my pancakes light and fluffy. I’ve also had lunch at The Quarter before and it’s pretty decent. Overall the food is acceptable, the service is decent, the coffee is not bad – an overall dependable place to have brunch.

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Number 2. Auctions Rooms, 103-107 Errol Street, North Melbourne.

I’ve only been to this place once and I have mixed opinions about this place. Food was pretty good. First thing you should know is that their menu consist of original recipe type dishes, but you can still pull together an order of bacon, eggs and toast. I can’t remember the name of the dish I has as it’s name after auction terms but it’s basically baked eggs with chorizo, and potato and carrot hash – it was pretty good. But there is one thing you should really try from Auctions Rooms, their pancake! Trust me, this is no ordinary pancake. Despite it’s size, it’s light on the inside and crispy on the outside, REALLY GOOD. Service was ok but it was really hectic. Let me put it this way, a place can be busy but still offer smooth service, but here the service was really hectic. Although the staff was really nice, so I guess I can let that slide. The down side was the coffee. Very, very disappointing. The coffee wasn’t hot?!? According to Annie, she revisited the place and asked for very very hot coffee and it can as just (maybe) hot enough. So I guess they need a new barista. But honestly, if you don’t order coffee, the food is pretty good. Plus I kinda like the layout of the cafe itself – it has an open kitchen, a back patio, and even though the place is quite cramped it feels open.

*To get to Action Rooms, catch the 57 tram from Elizabeth Street towards West Maribyrnong. Get off at stop 12 (just before the tram turns off Errol Street). Keep walking up Errol Street past Queensberry Street, it’s not far from the stop.

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Number 3. Gattica, 223 Carlisle Street, Balaclava.

Amongst the 3, I would give this one the highest rating even though I’ve only been there once. The food is good and comes in a generous portion and apparently the coffee is just fine (I didn’t have coffee). The thing which deserves the most mention is their homemade hash browns. I had the hash stack with chorizo, homemade baked beans, crumbled feta, and fried free range egg. The other thing is that the 3 cafes essentially have the same price range but the portion in Gattica is the most generous. They also serve really nice homemade jam with their toast, you just have to ask for it. The food is indeed very good. Even though it’s a little out of the city, it’s really close to the train stop so no worries.

*To get to Gattica, take any train that stops at Balaclava Station. Get off there and turn right coming out of the station. It’s right next to ANZ.

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I have to mention this when mentioning The Quarter. If you walk along Degraves Street towards Flinders Street, there is a little shop that makes and sells THE BEST cupcakes in Melbourne. It’s called Little Cupcakes. If you like cupcakes or anything along those lines, TRUST ME, you will want to stop by this place.

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Another place worth mentioning, as it turns out not a lot of people seem to know about it, is Laurent, a French patisserie located at 306 Little Collins Street (between Swanston and Elizabeth). Forget Brunetti (mediocre and overrated) or Greco (average and terrible customer service). Here the pastries are actually good and none of the staff think they are better than you. However, be warned that the pastries are a tad bit pricy.

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These are the few things that I can remember that I wanted to blog about. Until next time, itadakimasu.

This is actually a long overdue entry. My housemates and I had decided to try out Supper Inn after hearing good comments from others about the place as well as from the internet. However our experience there was not as pleasant as hoped and has left a rather bad impression on us. Firstly it was rather surprising that there was a minimum charge to book a table so we decided to not do that. However there was still a minimum charge even without the booking but I guess they are not the only restaurants that do that. The food itself was actually pretty good, I was pleased with the quality of the food. However the service was something left to be desired. The waiter/waitress that had served us was not very responsive nor showed much empathy. There were 6 of us there that night and 1 had decided that she wanted to have congee instead of sharing a meal with the rest of us, so rice (which is ordered seperately) was ordered for 5. It came in a little bucket so we had assume that the bucket was for our table to consume as we liked. So when we had quite a lot of leftovers, we asked the girl who had chose to eat congee to try the dishes and have some rice. When the waitress saw us doing so, she came over and told us that that was not allowed as we had ordered rice for 5 people even though the bucket was more than half full, and that if she wanted to have some she had to pay extra. Not only that but she immediately snatched the bucket of rice away without even asking if we were done. I thought that that was extremely rude and we were all outraged. What made it worst was that it was obvious that they did not behaved the same way with the other customers, namely the Chinese speaking Chinese and the Caucasions. It was obviously discrimination! And by people of my own race. Even though the food was good, I have to say that I will never spend another cent in that restaurant ever again.

Well it’s now coming to the end of week 2 of semester 1 of uni… This semester is definitely going really quickly… especially with my service audit project!! Anyway so since being back, I have furnished my bedroom and unpacked, and those were not easy things to do since I have loads of accumulated crap… We’ve also had a house warming bbq… went to the Melbourne Motor Show… and the Moomba Water Festival… Every year I go to the Moomba Festival and see everyone holding a toy they’ve won and I’ve always wanted one and this year, I finally got something… yay!! It’s been a crazy few weeks… so much to get done!!

In front of Disney’s California Adventure Park entrance, Anaheim.

There are two types of gondolas on the Sun Wheel, the stationary ones like on normal Ferris Wheels, and the swinging ones that slide along the blue tracks on the wheel which cause the gondolas to swing (A LOT)! 

Bear Mountain.

Sleeping Beauty’s Castle in Disneyland, Anaheim.

The front of the It’s A Small World ride.

The musical fountain in Toontown.

At the Universal Studios, Hollywood.

The Seaworld San Diego, mascot, donkey. So cute!

At Santa Barbara.

At the Pantages for WICKED, Hollywood.

The Eiffel Tower at Paris, Las Vegas.

L’arc de triomphe at Paris, Las Vegas.

Coming from Le Village Buffet, Paris, Las Vegas.

In front of New York New York, Las Vegas.

At the Mirage for Cirque du Soleil – LOVE, Las Vegas.

Armed with a snowball.

Our attempt at a snowman.

Outskirts of Las Vegas.

Ok so since I’ve taken awhile to actually write this (yes I have been extremely lazy and have not been writing in my blog at all in the past year, and I wonder if anyone would still bother to check my blog); my memory of the vacation is just a little hazy, but nevertheless I will try my best to capture it here.

Our first day arriving in LA was pretty much a bore, as we arrived late in the afternoon and we had to drive down to Anaheim which took us longer than expected as for those of you who may have had some experience with Californian traffic, is absolutely horrendous. So by the time we got to the hotel, it was rather late. We stayed at Residence Inn which was basically situated just a few blocks down from Disneyland.

Next day, we were off to Disneyland. You may be thinking: “Aren’t you a little old to be going to Disneyland?”. Well firstly you are never too old for a trip to Disneyland. However it was not too long ago that I visited Disneyworld (last year’s vacation) and Disneyland is just about the same. But what can a person do when they are travelling with young children.

Day 3, we took a long drive back to Hollywood to Universal Studios. We haven’t been to the west coast for awhile now and I couldn’t believe how different this Universal Studios was from the one in Orlando! There was hardly anything to do there. I was very dissapointed.

Day 4 and 5 were spent going between Disney’s California Adventure Park (Disneyland’s twin park) and Disneyland. Well we actually bought this special pass that gave us 3 days access to these parks, so we might as well use it to the max.

Day 6, we check out of Anaheim. We then decided to visit the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana for awhile and a little shopping nearby before driving down towards San Diego. We stayed at Residence Inn again. The science center wasn’t exactly the best one I’ve ever been to but it was still rather entertaining after continuous days at Disney.

Day 7, drove further down into San Diego to get to Sea World. Nothing much to do there but watch the shows and enjoy the ribs (haha ;p). Then is was back to LA to pick up my elder sister who flew in from London to join us. That night we stayed at Embassy Suites.

Day 8, we initially thought of going to Knott’s Berry Farm but when we got there we found out that they were having a special weekend where if you bring in a toy (to be donated to charity for Christmas) you get to enter for free. And there were HEAPS of people!! So instead, we decided to go shopping instead.

Day 9, we checked out and headed north to San Bernadino where we checked in to Residence Inn there and then headed up to Lake Arrowhead to see a little snow. Unfortunely there weren’t that much but it was the first encounter with snow for my two little siblings.

Day 10, checked out and headed for Las Vegas. After a long long drive, we finally checked into MGM Grand. Then we went for lunch at Planet Hollywood’s Spice Market Buffet. Later that night, we caught Cirque du Soleil – LOVE at the Mirage.

Day 11, we went for Breakfast at Le Village Buffet in Paris (Las Vegas). Then we went shopping! That night we caught Mamma Mia! at Mandalay Bay.

Day 12, we ran late so we decided to have breakfast in the hotel itself at the MGM Grand Buffet. Then we went up the mountains to try our luck with snow again. The second time around was much more successful. We even made a snowman. After that we went back down to do more shopping.

Day 13, we returned to Planet Hollywood for breakfast. After we were done, we checked out and headed back to LA. It was a really long drive back especially with the heavy traffic and not so good weather. It was interesting though cause at one point we were literally driving through a cloud! That night was the night me and my younger sister were looking forward to as we caught Wicked at the Pantages Theatre.

Day 14, was spent shopping and later that night we caught High School Musical On Tour at the Kodak Theatre, home of the Academy Awards.

Day 15, the last day. Pretty much wasted a lot of time trying to get to Chinatown because of that crazy Californian traffic. But did manage a little bit more shopping. We flew back that night.

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Hotel Review

Residence Inn Anaheim Resort Area/Garden Grove:

A little old but still clean. The room that we stayed in had furniture that was to my opinion needed to be renewed.

Residence Inn San Diego Oceanside:

Very new and very clean. Has brand new appliances like LCD TVs, alarm clock/ipod stand, and stainless steel kitchen appliances.

Residence Inn San Bernadino:

Relatively new and clean.

Residence Inn Los Angeles LAX/El Segundo:

A little old but well maintained. Small but due to it’s target market of business people who stay for a few days at most. Free shuttle to the airport which is just a few minutes away.

*All Residence Inn hotels basically have the same structure: free internet, free gym access, coin laundry, and buffet breakfast which usually includes sausage patties, potatoes, scrambled eggs, waffles, fresh fruits, assortment of breads and pastries, cerial, juices, coffee, hot cocoa, and soft drinks.

Embassy Suites Los Angeles – Downey:

Very old. Has low ceilings and bathrooms are very small. Needs a renovation. Buffet/cook-to-order breakfast is pretty good, includes scrambled eggs or you an order any type of friend eggs or build your own omelette, bacon, sausages, pancake, hashbrown, breads, pastries, fruits, juices, coffee, hot cocoa, cerial, and soft drinks.

MGM Grand Hotel Casino:

The biggest hotel in the United States (used to be the biggest hotel in the world until 2006 which went to the First World Hotel in Genting!). Like most hotels on the strip, it is large, grand, well decorated, has loads of attractions, and of course has a casino. The bathroom is HUGE, includes both a bath and a shower, and two basins. No breakfast though but seriously people want to go around and try the different restaurants and buffets in Vegas, so it doesn’t matter. Ok so the night that we went to see Mamma Mia!, I didn’t want to walk all the way to Mandalay Bay, so we decided to walk across the road from MGM Grand to Excalibur where there was a monorail that goes across Luxor to Mandalay Bay. So on our way back, just as we reached the Excalibur station, the power died and we were stuck in the monorail along with a whole bunch of other people who were also returning from the show. It was hilarious. Someone in another section of the monorail started calling out “Let us out! Let us out!” but obviously in a joking way. After a few minutes the finally managed to dock the monorail and open the doors. Everyone cheered and clapped. When we got back to the hotel it turned out that there was a power failure at one of the plants and the whole hotel except for maybe the casino was out. Man that sucked! We had dinner in the dark and it was getting rather warm. Good thing it was winter and we could let cold air in. It seemed that the power came back at like 3 or 4 in the morning but by then we were already asleep.

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Buffet Review

Spice Market, Planet Hollywood:

Lunch – Excellent! They basically have a food from different parts of the world theme so there’s Mexican, Italian, Asian, American, Mediterranean, etc. I loved the pastas the had. But everything was pretty good. They also have really good cookies and desserts.

Breakfast – Also has a world food theme but less choices. Crepes were excellent, the onl place with bananas as an option.

Le Village Buffet, Paris:

Breakfast – Huge buffet with good pastries. Some off the things an get a little repetitive but hey it’s breakfast there’s only so many choices. Loved the crisp hashbrown.

MGM Grand Buffet, MGM Grand:

Breakfast – Smallest breakfast but has excellent choices for salads, I personally am not the biggest fan of salads but I liked theirs.

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Shows Review

Cirque du Soleil – LOVE:

If you don’t know what Cirque du Soleil is, it’s basically a show with beautifully choreographed dance and aecrobatic movements. Cirque du Soleil -LOVE is choreographed to a collection of songs from The Beatles and it also incorporates stories from their lives. It runs for a little under 2 hours and it’s not the most exciting performance of any kind but it was beautifully choreographed and it did have a few parts that was rather interesting. The only way to know is to go catch it if you can. But I would say that you might not enjoy it all that much if you are not a huge fan of The Beatles.

Mamma Mia!:

This musical is about a girl’s effort to find out who her father is in time for her wedding. Sophie is a girl in her early 20s and has never known who her father is, thanks to the hard effort that her mother, Donna, has put in to hiding his identity. After a lot of digging around, Sophie found that there are three possible candidates and invites them all to her wedding. But when they arrive, secrets start to spill over and things get out of control.

This musical is written to incorporate the much loved hits by Swedish band ABBA. It is well written and is full of laughter, love, fun, and a lot of comedic drama. I loved it. The only dissapointing thing was the crowd that night was pretty much filled with rather old people and were not that into it. Basically at the end they have a section meant for the audience to get up and sing and dance along but that crowd didn’t. But still it was great. The Vegas cast did a good job with Carol Linnea Johnson (Donna) leading the way. She has a very interesting voice.

For those of you who can’t catch it, no worries as Mamma Mia! The Movie is due to be released in the summer of 2008.

WICKED:

This musical is basically the untold story of the witches of Oz. You know The Wizard of Oz. Yeah that Oz. It tells of how Glinda The Good and Elphaba The Wicked Witch of The West met and even became friends. What happened to cause their separate ways and what “actually” happened to Elphaba. Some parts does not sync up with The Wizard of Oz but it’s still well written and has everything from action to romance to comedy to drama. It’s AWESOME! Please if you have the chance, go see it! I was already very used to Kristen Chenoweth (Glinda) and Idina Menzel (Elphaba), the original cast, and comparison was inevitable but Megan Hilty (Glinda) and Eden Espinosa (Elphaba) were excellent as well. They are both veterans with this musical and both have excellent voices. They are so comfortable with their roles that they could play a little with it. I just recently found out that Eden wrapped up her time as Elphaba on 31st December and I couldn’t believe we got to catch her, she was actually meant to be the original Elphaba until they found Idina. I really hope I can see it again in Melbourne!

High School Musical On Tour:

Ok firstly I’m sure most of you know HSM by now. The stage version is basically the same story line just compacted. The cast is not the cast of the TV version. I’m not really sure what to say, I don’t think that the original HSM cast are the best singers in the world but I don’t think that the stage cast did any better. In fact I very much prefer the original cast but hey I am being a little bias as I am, yes I am, a fan of Zac Efron’s. I think the stage cast had decent voices on their own but did not mesh well when they had to sing duets.

Unlike the Mamma Mia! crowd, this crowd was filled with tweens and little kids, and it was insane! Everyone was screaming and shouting and singing along! I was going deaf. Everyone was just so into it and I was just like… woah! Yeah so definitely a kid’s show.

Oh and it was held at the Kodak Theatre where they host the Academy Awards and American Idol. I was surprised that it’s quite small really although it has a large reception area.

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Goofing around in the car

Me & elder sis

Me & younger sis

Three of us

Bought Pooh this year, since I bought Eeyore last year

Relaxation

Been to the Royal Botanic Gardens a few times for some relaxation… I really love that place… especially when the weather is nice!

Rotaract

Even though we are lacking in members… Rotaract has been quite active this semester… that was one of our projects at the 3 Towers event in Richmond.

Shalini’s Visit – Ballarat Day Trip

Shalini came down to Melbourne again over the spring break which gave us some opportunities to meet up with some Assuntarians… mostly our time was spent eating! We also had a day trip to Ballarat… I drove! My first time driving in Australia… was kinda weird and I was very very nervous at first but I wasn’t too bad… Surprise of the trip was when we found a cafe called Assunta’s… the sign was in school colours as well and they even had a student’s special… hehe… then again Ballarat was full of Irishmen back in the day during the gold rush…

Grampians Road Trip

The last weekend of the spring break, I went on a road trip with a bunch of O’Connell people… It was FUN!! Except for the driving… driving sucks… but I had a great time none the less… We stayed in a caravan park, went to the J-ward, night winery tour, went hiking up the Grampians, and the Ballarat Wildlife Park in Ballarat… the scenery was awesome… it was great to get out of the city for awhile… saw loads of kangaroos (including road kill) as well as an albino one… good fun!

From Olive Picking: – more info go to http://www.rotaractcarlton.org.au

From Royal Botanic Gardens:

From Noa & Jo’s Farewell:

Random:

My birthday this year was a smash… really it was… it was good fun… it started at midnight when Noa, Jun & Taz came to ambush me armed with two very cute balloons and a very charming card… hand made as well… Then Jun played some Black… which he still needs to complete for me… Later in the day… well in the afternoon… we went on a scavenger hunt that Fiona prepared… it was meant to be a tour of Melbourne since I was always going on about how I haven’t seen that much of it… It was quite fun but since we started rather late we really didn’t have time to complete it… Then we rushed back to get ready for dinner… I went to dinner with my friends from O’Connell at the Melbourne Central Lion Hotel… the food was pretty good bar food… and they had good cocktails… After dinner we were told that there would be free comedy in the pub as part of the Melbourne Comedy Festival promotion… so we hung around to watch… that was until the 4th comedian who went on about porn and sex… so we decided to leave… we just went next door to Kingpin/Barcode to play some pool/air-hockey… man my pool skills really have degraded… it was soooo bad… but my air-hockey skills weren’t really that good either… but it was still good fun…

On Wednesday, I met up with Li Chin who came down from Adelaide, as well as Yan Zhen who brought her sister along… we went for lunch at Ajisen Ramen on Burke Street… Li Chin was so sweet as to give me a very nice watch for my birthday which I have become rather fond of but also in constant fear of scratching or breaking it as I am so used to the invincible Tag watch I’ve had all these years…

On Thursday, I met up with some high school friends organised by Ash… we went to Stalactites for dinner… Ash and Tjia Wen got me a scarf which I think is very cool… refer to picture… Vin Li and Pei Ling got me a set of salt and pepper bottles which is very nice as well… and red (yay) although I think I would prefer to use them for oil and vinegar…

On Saturday… I was meant to have a reunion with my friends from college who are in Melbourne but unfortunately and also outrageously… they did not show up… none zip nada… except for Li Chin of course who organised it… Yan Zhen was sick so she decided to skip it… Although I really do think that I’d rather not have it any other way since we ended up going to the Royal Botanical Gardens… well okay… I brought Li Chin to the shrine and we happened to stumble by the garden which I did not know was there… It’s very very nice… I wanna go back there one day just to like lie in the sun and read a book or something… It’s absolutely gorgeous and so quiet… I really enjoyed it…

Cheers to everyone who made my 21st so great… XOXO…

After a year of absense due to the Commonwealth Games… the Melbourne Moomba Water Festival made it’s appearance again this year… The festival or fair was just as big as I remembered it from 2005… and the fireworks were pretty good too… uncomparable to Disney World’s fireworks but still good… As usual I didn’t get on any of the rides nor try my luck on any of the games… Yes I am so unadventureous… Whatever… At least this year it was way more fun going with the O’Connell people…