I Haz Moved!

Hello everyone!

Yes I have finally done it. After all the egging from everyone else... I have moved to timothytiah.com

Check there for updates from now on.

www.timothytiah.com

I will miss this old blog :)

VIlla Stay in Mount Martha

So after the wine tour we went for that Saturday, the 9 of us checked into the villa we booked for the weekend. It was on a hill called Mount Martha where they had a lot of really nice houses in this really nice residential area. The houses on the hill overlooked the sea down below. It was really nice... but told.

I didn't get many shots of it but this is how it looked like from the driveway outside.

There were 5 bedrooms in the villa, 3 of them looked really nice with a window overlooking the sea view and all. Ming and I who were the only non-couples there (along with Ming's sister) decided to give the nice rooms to the 3 couples. We damn nice right?

This is how the nice rooms look like.

Nice huh? They look as if they were made just for couples to go in there, light up candles and have a nice romantic night together err... playing... scrabble.

And this is the Master bedroom that Grace and David stayed in.

The Master bedroom has this really big connecting toilet to it but the toilet just like everything else in the house was done in a very old fashioned kind of style so I found it a little creepy.

Now on to the remaining 2 rooms where the non-couples were staying (me, Ming and Ming's sister).

This is the room Ming shared with his sister.

I know right? It's not too bad but compared to the previous rooms, it looks like we just went from 5-star to like... 2 and a half star.

My room on the other hand was smaller. I didn't take a picture of it because everyone said that my room was haunted. When they all walked into my room for a while they said they felt depressed and all and there was like something in there that was scaring them. I didn't have a choice though so I just... well... bit the bullet and slept in that room.

I didn't want to take a picture of it though. Didn't want to catch a picture of something that I shouldn't be seeing.

This is the living room with a fireplace. There was a real fireplace ok!

Then when you walk out the balcony there are some tables and chairs for us to sit on and chill.

And the nice dining room with a kitchen at the back for us to prepare our meals.

So seeing the kitchen and all we all decided to go grocery shopping right after checking in. We went to the nearest supermarket we could find in the quiet town and shopped away. Our trolley filled up so quickly it was as if we were all hungry refugees seeing a fully stocked supermarket for the first time.

The experienced housewife in the group (Grace) was shocked at our shopping habits. Like when Ming brought one huge bag of mushrooms to the trolley she said

"You obviously don't cook that much.. you don't need that much mushrooms!!!"

Ming responded

"I do cook a lot... and that's how I know we need that many mushrooms and more!!!"

The bill in the end came to something like AUD200-300 I think... just enough groceries for the weekend.

Grace just sat down and gave us her shocked face.

After grocery shopping it was time for us to hunt for dinner. We were going to try this little Chinese restaurant there for some noodles until Ming spotted something else that drew his attention away : Indian food. I cannot begin to tell you how much Ming loves Indian food.

We stood outside looking at the menu until this Australian guy came out of the restaurant with a lot of take-away. He was heading towards his new car (some new Merc jeep) and Ming just openly said

"Nice car Sir, you look like a man with great taste! Tell me is the food good?"

Now if I were the Aussie I would've been a little puzzled at first but the friendly guy just replied

"Yes!", then got into his car.

That was enough for Ming to go for it so we all had Indian food that night and it was great.

On the way out of the restaurant later that night we passed by this other restaurant that had something really cool. Check out this restaurant and tell me if you spot anything.

Notice how there's an arcade game machine in the picture? They use that game machine as a restaurant table!

What a cool idea.

We all went back that night and played some games. Taboo was one of them. We played Guys vs Girls in taboo and the girls won (but we played again the next day and the guys won back our pride... maybe the girls let us win but no matter we won anyway!!)

The next morning when I woke up though, the food we bought from the supermarket was all cooked and ready for breakfast.

We had a great breakfast that morning!

I really enjoyed the weekend stay at the villa. It's the first time I've done something like that. I mean it's a bit old and creepy at night but overall with the right company, it was a great place to stay.

We did almost nothing but just relax and play board games all weekend and it felt really nice.

I would do it again some time. Not too often but some time again :)

Recurrent Corneal Erosion again....

If you've been following my blog since 2 years ago you'd know that I once had a recurrent corneal erosion. If you want to know a bit more about what it is and how I got it, check out my previous blog entries here, here and here.

In a nutshell though I got it more than two years ago when I happened to injure by cornea by scratching my eyes hard one morning. Scratching your cornea I guess is something that happens to a number of people but if you're unlucky your cornea doesn't heal well enough on its own.

Then whenever you sleep at night and your eyes are dry, your corneal sticks to your eyelids or something. So when you wake up in the morning and open your eyelids, it pulls out a piece of cornea with it and you experience really bad pain. To make matters worse, sometimes if the area of cornea pulled out is big enough, it will hurt so bad you won't be able to open both your eyes for a few days until your cornea heals back again.

Fortunately, the cornea is a part of your body that heals really quickly on its own. There are many ways to treat it so I went for laser surgery two years ago and since then it's healed. Had no problems with it at all until last night when I woke up experiencing the pain in my eye that I know so well. Surprisingly since I wrote about recurrent corneal erosion I've had quite a number of readers who e-mailed me sharing their experiences as well. I guess it helps to know that some others go through this with you.

I'm going to see a doctor on Monday but now I'm worried. I'm worried that it might be bad enough that I won't be able to go to New York and meet My Hello Kitty there for this trip I've been looking forward to for a very long time. I used to feel really sad when I had this problem. But I've learned to look at it more positively. While this is a big inconvenience for me, I'm glad that it's nothing permanent and something that can be solved. It's nothing that would affect my living a normal life. So well... that's it. I'm just a little worried about having to miss my New York trip. Everything's already been booked and paid for. I hope I'll still be able to go and have fun.

Anyway on the happier things, catching up with some Project Alpha episodes.

Here's episode 15 of Niki Cheong's interview with Xiaxue

If you haven't seen London.. check out this episode where Niki and Xiaxue go sight-seeing around London with Ming as a tour guide.



Makes me really miss London myself. I wanna go back!

Told My Hello Kitty that I'll take her back next year if I have the money to. You also get to see Boss Ming featured in there !!! We were in London for the shoot. Well I was behind the scenes but Ming was the guide since he's been in London for years and still finds a way to go back there a few times a year. See the camera he was holding though, that's the infamous "Beast".

It also features Borough Market. I blogged about it some time back. Remember?

This episode is of Jojo, Niki and Xiaxue right outside the stadium of the big Chelsea Vs Arsenal game there. Love the spirit the English have for their football.

And here's the least episode with Niki and Xiaxue where Xiaxue talks a bit more about her husband Mike.

I love how in this episode Xiaxue talked about Mike being untidy and Mike defended himself saying "You have understand... she has OCD". HAHA! I have OCD too :(

Ah love catching up on Project Alpha on the weekends.

Have a great weekend everyone. It'll pass much quicker than you think :)