Australia Day Long Weekend. YAAAAYYY!

31 January 2013

I could barely hold my excitement back when I found out last week that we get a public holiday on Monday because Australia Day falls on a Saturday this year. Score!

Saturday morning was a whole lot of prayers. We started off at Dad and Mum’s place, giving our thanks to what has been a good and bountiful year in 2012 and then followed it up by asking the Buddhas for a safe and prosperous new year ahead.

We had to do a few hundred kowtows and I was a tad unsure how Jess would react to it but she did pretty well surprisingly. She didn’t even break a sweat and looked like she’s done this before. Hmmmm.

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Here’s Mum leading the prayers for the females. Jess getting her first taste of “Xie En” and “Kou Qiu”. We only do about two thousand kowtows over here in Melbourne. I remembered we used to do up to eight thousand in Singapore so this wasn’t really even close to what I had to go through before.

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Another shot from the back. Dad had actually just painted the room during the Christmas holidays so the wooden panelling with the painting of the Goddess of Mercy and beige walls were all new.

Coincidentally, Twitter released its video sharing app Vine and I thought what better chance to try it out with my first Vine on the prayers going on at my parent’s home?

After we finished up at Dad and Mum’s, we rushed over to Shiping and Cheryl’s prayer hall and repeated the prayers one more time. Clayton was sporting a new haircut so guess what I did?

After prayers were finally wrapped up, we all drove down to the city to indulge ourselves to a “traditional” Aussie Day lunch at the newly opened Gong De Lin Vegetarian Restaurant on Swanston Street.

Amber suggested this new place which only opened its doors a couple of days ago and even though it was nice know that there are more options for vegos in the city now, the food was really disappointing with every dish having carrots and capsicums in it as a secondary ingredient…a pattern that I noticed after the third or fourth dish was served.

And it wasn’t cheap too. There were 10 of us at lunch and the meal came up to $300. Pretty pricey for a shared lunch and it’s fair to say I probably wouldn’t go back.

I’ve got my Australia Day Big Blue clash between Melbourne Victory and Sydney FC in the afternoon so we all went our separate ways after lunch and as I was heading down to AAMI Park for my game, Roy sent everyone this photo.

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That’s right, it’s Redfoo from the now defunct LMFAO. The Australian Open  was on and his girlfriend Victoria Azarenka was playing in the  women’s single finals that night so they were probably on their way there before Roy bumped into him.

Anyways, I made my way down to AAMI Park for my game and it was AWESOME. It was the first time Alessandro del Piero was playing against Victory in Melbourne for Sydney FC and I was really excited to watch him play.

But what was even better was Melbourne Victory’s Marco Rojas’ continuing his red hot form by scoring two goals against the Sky Blues. Archie Thompson score the other goal for a convincing 3-1 win. Couldn’t have been a better ending to an awesome Saturday.

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Sunday started off with a bang like how Saturday ended. I really wanted to go to brunch so Jess and I headed off to Seddon Deadly Sins in the western suburbs. I’ve always seen my friend Maddy describing how she loves that place on Facebook and she’s always there every other weekend so I figured it MUST be good.

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They used old children story books as their menus! I have to admit that’s pretty cool. A little hipster-ish but definitely unique and cool.

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My “Gluttony” vego big breakfast which I thought was awesome except for the the fact that they probably should have given me two pieces of toast instead of one. Take note Seddon Deadly Sins!

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Jess’ salsa and chorizos with toast.

After our bellies were filled with delicious brunch, Jess and I reckoned it would be a good idea to head to Williamstown beach for a stroll since it was just nearby. It was a warm day with blue skies, the perfect kind of day to be out and about at the beach!

We saw some trees leaning weirdly away from the coast and couldn’t resist some photos with them.

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Next stop was the Williamstown Marina and we sat out in the sun for a bit doing some reading. I was quite surprised that there were quite a few shops in these parts (FIVE ice cream stores…so yeah.) and it was full of families with kids but not too busy like St Kilda.

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Oh and did I mentioned that there were FIVE ice-cream stores? Jess was craving for some sundae and I was being a greedy pig so we stopped by The Ice Cream Shoppe for some cold refreshments. Yum!

You would have think that that was a fairly full on day by then but nooooo…..we went back to Jess’ place where she spent about 2 hours getting some work done before we decided to head down to the local car wash to give our cars a long waited wash and clean.

We then headed down to the local fish and chip shop, grabbed some dinner and headed down to Darebin Park for dinner before deciding to direct our own shadow short with Vine. Don’t ask me what we were doing because I had no idea too. Haha!

We then watched Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter later that night. I suggested the movie after Jess was telling me how good Zombieland was (She caught it on Friday) and I thought she might be still in for a supernatural themed movie.

Monday came along and Jess made me go running with her in the morning and then we attended a Blenheim BBQ gathering with some of Jess’ mates.

Unfortunately I didn’t have any photos but I had a really good time hanging out and getting to know some of Jess’ friends from New Zealand so it was good.

By the end of the long weekend, I was dead beat but I couldn’t be happier how it had went. Fun times, good food, good football. What more can I ask for!?