velleyjie

9:00am: Sundays always posess a special quality about it. A lazy morning breakfast or a weekly event that only happens on sundays. Today, Jie and Qi prepares to go for both. Preparations were made well before hand, from waking up earlier than usual; to calling Qi’s contacts to find out where to have a good nice dim sum breakfast. The eventual breakfast venue won hands done over the rest, since it was right in the city and in chinatown. Others were on the outskirts of the city and proved to be a formidable challenge because we had to wake up even earlier. Even today, Jie narrowly escapes the punishment for waking up late, by being pushed out of bed by a very formidable Qi.

10:00am: Dragon Boat Restaurant. We realised this was not the first time that we had come to this place to eat. The only difference was that today it was packed, and the last time it looked deserted. We found our seats and started ordering our dim sims from the push trolleys. And for the record, "dim sims" is not a typo error. The traditional cantonese cuisine is really called dim sims here, as what they had written on the signboards. We had dumplings of all sorts and other stuff.

10:45am: Since today was Sunday, it was also the perfect day to go exploring at Camberwell market. But as we found out later, it seemed like we explored more of the city’s transportation network and system than the market itself! Here’s how the story goes:

11:00am: Walks over to Melbourne Central

11:05am: Spends half an hour trying to find which is the correct platform to take the train

11:35am: Boards train to go Richmond to change to another train to Camberwell

11:50am: Stops at Richmond to board train towards Lilydale

12:20pm: Train stops at some godforsaken place. Informs us that we have to take the bus.

12:30pm: 3 buses go express to Lilydale, and 1 bus which stops at all train stops along the route. How friendly can they get? By the time we had come out of the train station, that 1 single bus which goes to Camberwell had already been full. And the other 3 buses were empty.

12:45pm: Waiting game ends, to be informed they have no idea when the next bus will come. But they said if we ran back fast enough to the train station, there might be a train coming to go Camberwell.

12:50pm: Runs to the train platform. No train. Platform conductor has no idea which train is coming and what time its coming. Some kids decide to walk to Camberwell instead.

1:00pm: Jie and Qi attempts to walk back to the bus waiting area.

1:05pm: Hears a train coming and runs back to the train platform. *pant pant pant*

1:15pm: Train goes off.

1:20pm: Train informs passengers that it terminates at another godforsaken place and they have to take the bus. *more curses and swears*

1:30pm: Luckily it managed to stop at Camberwell station before terminating its service.

1:35pm: Brisk walk to Camberwell Market.

1:40pm: *Ding dong ding dong* Camberwell Market is closing. So much for the most livable city in the world. Jie and Qi had just spent travelling 2 and a half hours to spend 5 minutes at the market which only opens on Sundays. *Jie pulls his hair*…..

1:50pm: We found a cafe called HushHush Cafe and decided to rest our feets. Qi’s iced coffee tasted like milk, while Jie’s lemonlime bitters tasted like sugar syrup. The only thing we had for comfort were each other, and a book of circle puzzles.

3:00pm: The journey back to the city was a wee bit smoother. Since we had already bought a whole day pass on the trams, we went to Ikea to have a look.

3:30pm: The first thing we did was to look for food. Found the Ikea cafeteria and were quite excited about their late lunch specials. We shared a plate of swedish meatballs and a baked herb salmon. We also realised all the Ikea stores around the world probably had the same colour scheme and the same look. If you have seen one, you would already know how the rest looks like. Even the taste of the food was the same in the Singapore and Shanghai branches.

4:30pm: The only thing we bought was a pack of screws. The use of it would be explained later. Haha. It had been a long day of travelling for both Jie and Qi. And so it was time to head back to 101 for a rest.

5:30pm: The screws were used to afix broken toiletries holders in the bathroom. For some reasons too difficult to explain, the handle for the toilet roll holder had come off. The screw had broken and needed to be replaced. Likewise, for another bunch of reasons too difficult to explain again, the towel handle had come loose. And so with a bunch screws in hand, Jie locked himself in the bathroom trying to fix the problem with the limited amount of tools that he had.

5:35pm: *Bi4 Guan1 Xiu1 Lian4*

6:00pm: Jie emerges happy from the bathroom. With extra screws leftover, Jie walks around 101 to find stuff to fix. All he could find for now was a broken chair that needed a good screw. *no pun intended* And all the while, Qi had been busy preparing dinner. The smell coming from the kitchen stove was much more invigorating than the one from the putty which was used to fix the toilet fittings.

6:30pm: *Dinner Dinner Dinner*!!! There was no time for anything else, except to eat eat eat!!!

7:30pm: After washing up, we watched a bit of tv, watched a bit of Full House and watched a bit of each other. 

The night ended early for 2 tired pairs of feet. They said goodnight to each other, and set off for slumberland together….ZZZ

10:00am: We are going to St Kilda’s Beach. Whatever pre-conceptions of St Kilda’s that we have, we usually get to throw them away each and everytime we visit it. Today was no exception.

11:00am: There was no Greasy Joes today. Not because it was closed, but rather we decided to have something else for brunch. Although Jie and Qi did regret a little on not having bacons, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms and leafy veggies for brunch. Its higly recommended by us to "GO TRY IT!!". Hmm, alright, back to what we actually had….  What better food to try at the beach than Fish and Chips! Another word of advice from us "seasoned" St Kilda go-ers; if you find the variety of seafood at the chippery shop to much to choose from, we highly reccomend the "Seafood Platter".

 

It usually comes in a combination of different seafood, and of cos it comes with the usual chips. If you think having a seafood platter would be a healthier choice as compared to "Greasy" Joes, Jie and Qi would like to think otherwise. They are both as fat. HAHA!!

12:00pm: After our succulent, sumptous seafood snack, Jie and Qi takes a walk along Ackland Street. Its a little street lined with cafes and misc shops. We went into a book shop and got ourselves a Circle Puzzle book and a pen, which proved to be a wise investment for the rest of the trip.

12:30pm: The next stop was the beach, literally just a stone’s throw away from Ackland street. Well if you had strong arms, we reckon the stone could make it to the water…. And so, Jie and Qi threw their feet one at a time and quickly reached the place where we would normally take a breather. As Qi would say,"my favorite spot!".

 

1:00pm: With spring finally coming, the grass beds were starting to grow little yellow flowers, much to Qi’s delight. Surprisingly there were no seagulls for Jie to chase around. And we didn’t have to worry about hungry seagulls trying to steal our potato chips. But well, since we didn’t have any food, so we shouldn’t have to worry about anything in the first place! Haha!

 

With the grass and flower bed to ourselves, and time on our hands, Jie and Qi takes out their circle puzzle, and started drawing circles, circles and more circles. Its a game for people with a quick mind, and dexterious hands and feet. Fast hands for circling the answers, and fast feet for distracting the other party. Jie’s quick mind churned out quick feets, while Qi’s quick mind churned out faster hands. At the last count, Qi had more circles than Jie at a ratio of 1:5. Jie’s feet shall have to learn to move faster…

3:00pm: With Qi wining 10 out of 10 games, she was getting pretty tired. And so was Jie’s feet. We decided to take a stroll back to Ackland street to enjoy some dessert. A welcomed break for Jie, with time to generate a new strategy. We settled down at one of the many cake shops, because that particular was the least crowded of all. With all the window displays being so wonderlicous looking, no wonder they were tempting throngs of people into them. We shared a Blueberry apple slice, a capuccino for Qi and a Lift for Jie. There inside the shop where we found our seats, the battle of quick feets and faster hands erupted.

 

5:00pm: Having lost all the puzzles again, Jie decides to save the embarassment by saying he wanted to go back to 101 to have a rest. Qi was gracious enough to oblige.

7:30pm: We took a break back at 101 before heading out for dinner at Chinatown. The shop we went to was called "Dessert house". Although Jie could see loads of people eating, but none were having any dessert at all. Its like going into a gelato shop to ask for mashed potato. Nontheless, we still ordered our Beef Hor Fun to share, and hot milk tea for the both of us. If there was anything signs to depict how nice the horfun was, it was by the amount of mess that Jie had left behind on the table. Apparently Jie had an even faster mouth which had gobbled up everything quite untidily.

8:30pm: While we had planned to go the Crown Casino to have our "dessert", Jie and Qi passed by the GV cinemas which were introducing $8 tickets. The price and movie that was shown was too enticing that we decide to forgo our Crowne adventure. The movie was for 930pm and so we still had some time to walk around. Having nothing to do and most of the shops closed for the day, Jie and Qi went down to the QV foodcourt areas. There we found a warm spot and empty seats. This time round, Qi’s circles were only at a ratio of 5:2 against Jie’s. A marked improvement for Jie.

9:30pm: "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" + Popcorns!!! It was a free-seating cinema. And because it was’nt really crowded, we managed to get pretty good seats. *willy wonka….. willy wonka……* Qi was singing all night long after that..

11:30pm: With the movie ended, Jie and Qi heads back to 101. It was time to celebrate our happy belated mid-autumn’s festival, with our very own paper lanterns and everything! Jie carefully places 3 paper lanterns out onto the balcony. A green lantern from Jubes, a pink frills lantern from Jie and a hello kitty lantern from christine. And out on the balcony they shone, two of them quite brightly and one a little more shy.

 

12:00am: With the lanterns afixed, we brewed out tea, ate out mooncakes and attempted to finish our konyaku jellos. It was our first mid-autumn celebrations together, albeit it was a little belated. But it didn’t matter. We enjoyed it nontheless….

 

Having excercised much of our mind, and having our tummies filled. We got on to our regular Korean drama serial.

*cuddle cuddle cuddle*. With the sounds of the gentle winds blowing outside, we fell asleep. Whether in each other’s arm I wouldn’t know.

I only knew it felt great….zzZZzz