jesus. church. life. parents. family. marriage. friends. food. jobs. health. talents. home. safety. free time. busy times. gifts. money. happy times. sad times. challenges. successes. rain. sun. gray clouds. cold winds. balmy breeze. television…

and our humble li’l thanksgiving dinner success on sat night:

• rosemary (from our own garden!) and red onion roasted chicken, with apple mint jelly sauce (mint also from our own garden!)

*roasting chicken (or turkey) tip: soak the chicken in brine for about an hour prior to roasting. this makes the chicken moist, and the skin crispy after cooking.

• garlic and basil (from our own garden!) mashed potatoes
• sauteed green beans with thyme (from our own garden!)

* sautee-ing green beans tip: boil the beans in salt water first, and then put them in ice cold water. this helps preserve the fresh green color and ensures consistent cooking of the beans!

• pecan pie

i heart our herb garden. and, as all thanksgiving dinners go, we had so much leftovers. yum!

new pair of glasses + shorter bangs.

yes, exactly one month from today we’ll be back in my hometown singapore! i cannot wait to see the fam and friends, soak in the humidity, fight the crowds, shop, and eat up all the yummy food on that island. people think i’m crazy when i say this, but i truly miss singapore. in fact, i have dreams to move back to singapore and set up a private practice there. we shall see!

the color coordinated us in singapore last year for our wedding! in changi (not that you could tell…).

we had delicious home cooked galbi at a korean australian friend’s place tonight. she’s also lucky to have her mom live in the same town, which means she gets home made kimchi and was able to generously share it with us tonight. not to be a kimchi (or korean food) snob, but any korean person will tell you that mass produced kimchi bought in stores is almost always inferior to the ones carefully pickled at home. no, i’m not korean, but being married to one has certainly made me more particular about this. unfortunately, i have not penetrated the kimchi making world and in the last year away from the K-in-law’s, we’ve gone through jars of unsatisfactory tasting mass made kimchis. we’ve been lucky to have a couple of korean friends who have sporadically fed us with home made kimchi, and tonight was one of those lucky nights for us!

the well marinated and cooked galbi, home made kimchi, delightful korean style cucumber salad, really put our taste buds over the moon.

tonight’s meal also really reminded me that i need to try out more korean recipes. it was kind of an unspoken promise i made to bry’s mom when we left LA for melb, that i will endeavor to keep feeding bry with korean food. jang jo rim, a pickled beef meat, will be first on my list! as for kimchi…? hopefully i’ll get to make it sometime in the next 5 years.

ever since i took on the saturday job, bryan and i haven’t had as much time to spend with each other. which is why sundays have become so much more precious for us. bry recently bought us new bikes – mine is a cool mountain bike with gears and brakes that work smoothly (unlike my old one that squeaked and required the strength of an ox to get the brakes going), and bry’s is a fancy bike with hybrid tires.

of course, our bikes are a far cry in terms of style and cool factor (and cost) when compared with my dad’s (who is an avid biker and whose bike costs more than two round trip air tickets to the USA). nevertheless, for fair weather cyclists like us, our current bikes will suffice.

we’ve been cycling to the parks, checking out different parts of town, and really just spending fun, quality time together. yesterday, we again cycled from our place to the royal botanic gardens (about 20km round trip). the botanic gardens is such a pretty place especially in the spring. the floral and fauna collection there is immense and the landscaping is delightful. it’s kind of a perfect backdrop for a date. the weather was also beautiful: blue skies, cool, dry breezes amidst the warm sun. .there, we hung out at the tea house and sipped our favorite chai latte, while chatting away and taking in other fun sights like the little wedding ceremony in the park, kiddos with odd gaits trying to run up the slope, yuppies playing fetch with their dogs, families with young and old enjoying a picnic together…

i love these beautiful afternoons with b. and hope the weekend weather doesn’t get too hot so we can keep biking around town together!

(Photo circa 2008, from our old bike ride phase this time last year.)

so here’s a snapshot of what being an SLP employed by the department of education in melbourne victoria is like:

- technically, you don’t automatically get school holidays off (you have to apply to take those days off and yes you only get 20 vacation days a year);

- you sometimes work out of store rooms, principals’ offices, staff rooms…basically any spare room the schools can find you;

- you have to pay tax on your travel claims;

- you don’t really have a clear idea of a career progression path;

- you don’t get recognized monetarily for studying more;

- you get $300 to attend Professional Development courses;

- you have to pay for your own end of year celebration meals because apparently we don’t need a break or team bonding activities;

- you don’t get your membership with the professional board (Speech Pathology Australia) (about $450 a year) automatically paid for;

- you see kids for therapy at best once a fortnight which really allows you to see lots of progress (NOT).

and here’s what you get for being a teacher:

- almost all of the above catered for.

i’m still trying to understand WHY anyone would want to be a Department employed SLP for more than 2 years. the working conditions are absolutely shocking. not to mention graduate SLPs are paid WAY less than teachers for having similar qualifications (don’t even get me started on the fact that my Masters is not worth anything in this system).

take me back to california.

okay so this post is like a day late. i’ve been too busy with non virtual activities to keep on top of things here. anyway, much to my disappointment, (which i had already anticipated) halloween in australia is DEAD, DEAD, DEAD. pun unintended. we went to a restaurant dressed up in outfits (that weren’t even too outlandish) and realized we were the only ones dressed up for the occasion apart from the servers and a candy dispensing transformer dude (who, by the way, was awesome).

yes, yes, i was super lazy and went with my cowgirl outfit for the second time and promise it will be my LAST TIME doing that. next year i’ll plan ahead and really get a fun or at least different costume going. yes.

despite the lack of halloween spirit in this town (again pun unintended), we still had fun just being out there and representin’. but i miss how ridiculously big it is in the US. i miss having cutely dressed up kids come over trick or treating. hopefully next year we’ll see more people dressed for the occasion.

hope you had all the candy, pumpkin seeds, apple cider, laughs, spooks, and boooze till you’re hurting the next morning.

The koala is easily my favorite animal. The furry noses, the frizzy fur, the odor they emit, their passive personalities, and the way they lay in the trees: too cute!!

A (real) koala sleeping at the Australia Zoo in Brissy!

Finally went to Brighton Beach, home to the famous colorful beach huts. What a pretty sight to see on a lovely day in spring.

The school holidays are here. That means I get to work from home. Also, I took a few days “off” work. We’re going to Sydney this coming weekend to meet Bry’s sister and husband, then follow them to Noosa, and finally end the trip with a couple days in Adelaide where Bry has to be to present a paper. The whole trip in about 6 days.

I’m not setting my alarm for tomorrow morning. That means I get to sleep in till probably just past 7am (vs 6am on a normal school day): how luxurious!

i had one of the worst menstrual cramps ever today. it happened late morning and was so painful i could not walk, stand, or even sit up straight. of course it did not help that my day started with a parent walking out on me in the middle of our meeting, in tears, because she thought i was insinuating she was a bad parent. it also did not help that all morning, i had to run around to look for teachers, students, make phonecalls, try to get students interested in tasks, etc.

it was one of those days.

i decided to leave at 2pm – and return to the school to see the other kids on friday morning. which was wise because i got to go home early,  sit on the couch, fight my cramps, do research on the internet, and blog.

menstrual cramps really get to me every month: they usually attack me in the night and wake me from my sleep. even the maximum dosage of panadol cannot totally quell the pain and i typically go back to bed in tears but fall asleep shortly after out of sheer tiredness. i usually feel better about twelve hours after, much to my relief (and to bry’s sanity). cramps for me is usually the pinnacle in this whole ordeal called pms (pre menstrual symptom).

this topic might be a real turn off, especially to men, but it is real. i did not really want to blog about it before, thinking it is too grotesque. but really, it is not. it’s a condition. a condition that needs to be understood and managed. in fact, apparently, almost 60% of women deal with some form of pms.

my battle with pms is not unknown either to those around me: while i have been able to control my moods slightly better these last few years, my physical symptoms have escalated -  about two days before my period, my heartbeat increases, i have trouble sleeping, my body temperature increases and i tend to break out in sweat in the nights, and i tend to have sudden bursts of energy (which i try to channel to exercise). while i know my pms is not unmanageaeble, i and that i can do something about it, i haven’t. but i think it’s time to really start paying attention and manage it. i’ve scoured websites and will be in the next few months trying out diets that have been suggested to help. foods with higher calcium, magnesium, vitamin B6, for example, have been thought to improve these symptoms.

i’ll try to blog about my selection of foods and their effectiveness. hopefully self remedy will help improve my symptoms. being a women is tough enough normally. i don’t need this extra pain to affect my quality of life (and my family’s!!).

in the meantime, i think i am off to take another dose of panadol that will hopefully help ease the pain.