I’d like to thank the faithful few ex-RMIT friends that have given me support in times of need, and a few more close friends, especially all Moliuers in Melbourne who have carved so much sweet memories in the past few years.

To Fanny Tjan, you have been the reason that Moliuers existed in the first place. It was an honour to know you. I’ve learnt so many things from you, from social skill, financial advise, to how to court girls. You have been an inspiration. Gotta say, ever since you moved to Pt. Cook, we all kinda grew apart a little. No more surprise visit, no more sudden plan, and much less dinner calls. But regardless the physical distance, we’re all still close friends. So let’s just maintain that. Please take care of yourself and the rest of us. Everything is almost perfect, so your next task will be to find that missing piece of puzzle, and I wish you well for that.

To Eddy Lin, you have been, and will always be the clown in the group. There’s something in you that makes everybody laugh (be it laugh with you, or laugh at you). You are one of the few people in the world that never panicked, and has never shown much worry or care in the world either. Yet your life seems to be filled with laughter all the time. I wish you all the best for your future, wherever that will be.

To Patrick Li, wake up! Okay, seriously, of all the people I know, you’re probably the one that I criticise the most, sometimes even without rational thinking. But whether you know it or not, you have been the closest friend when it comes to sharing personal problems between mates. Yes you are annoying at times, but that’s good. So that I can always have someone to pick on, especially as the subject of my lame jokes. But when I’m gone, don’t worry, I’m sure there will be someone in the group that will continue my legacy, telling lame jokes/trivia while picking on you. I wish you all the best for your future. Dream high, work hard, and put effort into it, and I’m sure success will follow.

To the Yulianda sisters, you’ll be missed. I wish Cath good luck in the ultimate mission in life: find the right one and settle down. I’m sure the pressure is on, but as long as you enjoy your life, then just go with the flow. It’s good to see that Eileen grow up more mature after finding where she belongs: Mr Oh from Pt. Cook. Somehow that bubbly (and act childish) personality kinda diminish lately, but in a way, that’s a good thing. I wish you both a happy future together, and looking forward to your invitation

To Stephanie Tan, I wish you well too. All these time, you have been very helpful and contributed a lot to our social group. I may have missed your name occasionally, but you know it wasn’t my intention to do so. Blame my old age . And soon it’s gonna be your turn for a seachange. I hope, compared to mine, it’ll be an easier case for you to relocate to HK to join your beloved Philippe in building a happy family.

To Ginny Tjan, good luck for your future ahead. It seemed like this year, a lot of good things have happened upon you. Life seems to be getting better by the day. Keep it that way, and live your life with no regrets. I’m sorry I didn’t have the time to teach you more of my Photoshop skill. But whatever business opportunity you participate in, work hard for it, and when you’re about to be successful, let me know, who knows I’m interested in investing

To Vincent Tjan, as a true mate to mate, we’ll keep it short. Hope that $200 Bluray systems is really worth the money. All the best, bro.

To Billie and Angel, the two unseparated friends-slash-housemates, except when it’s New Moon, or when Hell’s Gate is open. Without Asien around, you guys were kinda drifting away from the group. Keep the spirit up. Together with my sister, you all are the true surround-sound laughing machine. I wish you good luck, and I’m sure we’ll meet again in Medan.

To Anne Domigo, the rice princess. You’re only a princess because someone’s better at eating more rice. And psst, it’s also because you’re slightly younger. You only hang around with us since recently, but it has given the group a much-needed new lease of life. Suddenly there’s someone else (female somemore) that join the Three Musketeers for their weekend meals. Good luck with your hunting, whatever that you are after.

To Her Majesty Queen Emily Chua, thank you for being my friend. All these while, I’ve probably never treated you like a lady when I told lame and dirty jokes to the guys. But I’m sure you loved my dirty jokes. Of all the girls mentioned here, I’ve known you the longest. I admit I have always been mean to you, but deep down inside, I consider you as one of the few close friends who can handle my lame and mean jokes without taking into heart. I admire you for your capability, honesty, professionalism, leadership, plus those talents that I cannot mention one by one here. But just so you know, your taste of music is not one of them. =P

To Liwen, thank you for taking over my room. You’ve saved me a lot of trouble. Also, thanks for having cooked for us every now and then. I love your belachan, although in high dosage, that won’t be good for my blood pressure =P Good luck to you, too.

To my family in Melbourne, I’ll deeply miss you all. We’ll meet up again very soon in Singapore, but what I will be upset the most is what comes next. Too bad I won’t be here for Fiona’s third birthday this year. There goes the chance of seeing Aaron and Fiona growing up, having an uncle to play with them. I will miss Fiona’s funny stories, and Aaron’s cheekiness. I hope they’ll still remember their sweet childhood where I was part of, by the time they’re able to read this (if they ever did). To my youngest sister, I hope you can carry out what I was unable to: to build a home in Melbourne for Mom and Dad. I wish you all the best for your future endeavour. Don’t get too comfortable and stuck in thecomfort-zone for too long. Be more proactive towards life, dream big, aim high, and work for it. Make me proud.

To Sanny, the sunshine of my life, I love you. You have brought a lot of happy days into my life. I thank you for being so supportive, and teach me how to love again. You are a good cook, helpful girlfriend, part-time maid, true lover, and my best friend. My decision to leave Melbourne is already so hard to make. With you coming into the equation, it is almost impossible to hold on to it. Every time you nagged about it, telling me not to go, that was the time I could only offer you silence as answer. Just because I had no answer that would make you feel better. Deep down inside, I really wished if I could just agree with you. But at the same time, I’d also like to take the opportunity to spend more time with my family. A lot of people asked about what will happen to us after I leave. I could only smile, and quickly change the subject. It’s not easy to be a good boyfriend, it’s even harder to be one from distance. But whatever it takes, I’ll try my best. 7,000 kms is nothing in this AirAsia-age. And I’m sure we will meet again very soon, in another 100 days or so. I’m already looking forward to that day. And by the way, the four little words are: I will miss you. And that one promise is… well, one promise.

I can go on and name names, but that’ll bored you to death, so I better stop here.

Nobody knows how much tears I have shed, yet I am not feeling any better at all after writing all these. Looking back, it seems like I have had the perfect life. I am so used to my lifestyle in here, and it’s gonna be a big challenge for me to suddenly start fresh somewhere else I call hometown. And that challenge is what scares me. I’m afraid of losing. I only hope God is laying a better plan for me ahead.

This is one of the most satisfying steamboats I’ve had in a looong, looooong time. And I wasn’t even imvolved much with the preparation. Big credit to Anne for bringing up the idea of steamboat, and executing the idea in such short notice.

For the past few years, we’ve always held lanterns walking around the neighbourhood looking for attention (from the photographer – me), just like Halloween’s Day, Chinese style. But not this year.

But what we lacked this year, we made it up by spending quality time with each other indoor, beating the cold weather by cracking a lot of jokes after dinner. There were no photos taken today, but this were one of the great moments I’ll remember in the days before I leave Melbourne.

I don’t know what next year will bring, but I’ll definitely miss our get-together with fellow Moliuers. You guys are such great stress-relievers.

Trivia of the day: why do mooncakes have yolks in them?
Answer: if they have minced meat in them, they’re no longer mooncakes, but dumplings.

Having spent $100 plus on average during weekends for the past few weeks, it wasn’t an easy challenge to take. And rightly so. I blew my budget by 33%.

Here’s how:

• On-street evening parking in the city for half an hour: two dollars. My sis chipped in one dollar, so I spent $1. Bloody greedy council, wanting citizen to pay parking up until 8.30pm on weeknights.
• Friday night dinner: Dessert House Eatery on Swanston St. Seafood omelette on rice, plus a glass of ice lemon tea, $12. Shouldn’t have ordered the drink, because I could have make do with a glass of water and saved $1.50, since Anne asked for water jug.
• Was nearly gonna watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes at night. Suddenly things came up, so I pulled out last minute, while the rest of the group went on to spend another $10 on movie in Hoyts Chadstone.
• Woke up late on Saturday, so I managed to skip breakfast.
• For the sake of saving money, I should have eat instant noodles at home for lunch. SOML suggested Minang for lunch. $6.50 for a combination of rice and three dishes. But instead, some of us were drooling on the thoughts of a bowl of Indosari’s yummy Lontong Sayur. So we drove all the way to Glenhuntly just for lunch. And there goes another $10 down my tummy. But it was filling. The Auntie owner even gave us a bag of fried chicken bits as complimentary.

Indosari’s Lontong Sayur with Beef Rendang

• After that filling lunch, we’ve got nothing to do. All we needed to do was to kill time until dinner (sounds sad, isn’t it?), while spending as least as we could. A cafe popped into mind. Seven Seeds to be exact. A cup of good coffee costs $3.50. It’s quite late in the afternoon, and I didn’t want to ruin my night time sleep, and I heard the chocolate is equally good, so I ordered a cup of hot chocolate. Right afterwards, Billie pointed out that a cup of hot chocolate actually costs $4.50. Damn, there goes another unnecessary $1 spending. But there was no regret. This was one of the best hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted so far. Rich, sweet (but not too sweet), and balanced between chocolate, milk, and froth.

Seven Seeds’ Hot Chocolate

• Come 7.45pm, and we arrived at Mabrown, ready to fill our tummy with more food. I consumed four pieces of the famous deep fried spicy quails (which costs $14.00, according to the menu), nearly two bowls of rice, few other dishes, as well as a lot of cups of chinese tea. Somehow the meal in Mabrown always made me thirsty afterwards. They must have had put a lot of flavour enhancer in the dishes they cooked. That particular meal set me back $24 (nearly half of my budgeted $50 expenditure for the weekend).
• It was only 9pm plus when we finished dinner, and I wasn’t in hurry at all to go back home. I mean, come on, I am way too young to go back home at 9pm on a Saturday night. I knew I already spent $52 so far, but at this point on a Saturday night, I couldn’t be bothered to stop myself from enjoying life. So we headed back to Appetizer, a Thai bar/pub/restaurant on the CBD corner for a quick drink. We ordered Shrek Lao Phan (Thai style green apple alcoholic slurpee), which costed another $5.

Green Apple Lao Phan

• Woke up late again on Sunday, so I managed to skipped two breakfasts in a row.
• And lucky for us, little Lucy (daughter of proud parents Yanti and Peter) is having month-old celebration at her home in Eltham. That means FREE LUNCH for us! I couldn’t be more excited than this. So we stuffed ourselves silly with fried noodles, pork leg stew, home-made pork balls, stir-fry vegies, and Javanese beef soto complete with emping crackers.
• From Eltham, we drove back to city, and found ourselves seated in Monga, a Taiwanese dessert place on Russell St. I had to dig another $5 from my (already-minus-in-balance) wallet for a bowl of mango sago, a bowl of black glutinuous rice, and a serve of green tea icecream and red bean paste on waffle.
• Already so full at this point, we still stuffed ourselves with dinner in A1. I shared a plate of BBQ pork spare ribs egg chiffon on rice with Emily. It costed us $5 each.

• A walk on a cold, sunny morning with the loved one is enough the make the world a much better place.
• If you keep a Macca’s McCafe disposable mug, you can ask for free refills on your next visit.
• Best thing about Korean restaurants is the fact that they always have “all-you-can-eat” side dishes.
• Joomak at 6pm on a Saturday night is as empty as a classroom on a school holiday. It’s the best time for early dinner, or pre-dinner drink. They serve very nice flavored rice wine.

A cozy little Korean place called Joomak, on Swanston St.

• Sharing is caring. We had pasta and pizza for dinner in Topolino’s, St. Kilda on a Saturday night. Because we were all sharing, no plate of pasta lasted any longer than 5 minutes. Everything was relocated into our tummies in a blink of an eye.
• We may be old, but we still got charged student price in AMF Bowling Alley, Clayton.
• You have to be careful who you consider as good friends. They might shoot your back without you knowing, especially during an M9 Laser Skirmish game.

Patrick was HAZARD, I was FUSION, and Emily was BEEZLEBUB.

• Waking up at 9am on a Sunday morning is much harder than waking up at 8am on weekdays.
• To have a good-yet-cheap yumcha in Melbourne, try walking into Shark Fin Inn on Chinatown, be seated, enjoy dimsums, pay the bill, and leave, all within 45 minutes time.
• $30 for a ticket in the superbox of Rod Laver Arena to watch Cirque du Soleil‘s Saltimbanco were all worth it. Superb show, but don’t expect a VIP-seat for such a bargain.

The closing bows, Saltimbanco.

• Auction Room serves one of the best hot chocolate in town. Be sure to come back here!
• When Patrick (or me) says “I’m not that hungry, I only want light dinner”, don’t take our words for it. Most of the time, we’ll end up overeat anyway.

I can go on, but I choose not to waste your precious time much longer. Now I just need to reset my mood back to “sleepy Monday –_–”.