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.

We had a lot of quality time for ourselves. Sleeping in without worry, waking up to your smelly breath (no one’s perfect, but that’s what make us beautiful), a lazy stroll in the city during peak hour, happy snaps along the way, romantic lunch by the quay, it really felt like the world belong to us.

Now with 50 days to go, I am making every second counts.

• 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 –_–”.

With one of RMIT lecturers. I guess everyone else in the photo is now married.

Ten years on, and I am and will still continue enjoying life.