my trip to Sydney

My uncle's wedding was quite fun. Seeing relatives that I haven't met in ages, my family, his wife, plenty of seafood and plenty of touristy action were all part of the package. The wedding ceremony itself was a pretty much simple traditional one, serving tea to guama, my parents and ji yee and ee tio. Div & I had the honour to be the ones serving tea.. A pity there weren't the little Chinese tea cups, so we had to make do with the standard Western tea cups. After that was the Western ceremony at the Gardens (which is quite pretty actually albeit being located practically next to the highway) and that was one fun one. The cameraman told them to pose for the wedding kiss and us cousins almost laughed out loud knowing (probably) how awkward it must have been to comply with such a request. Raj & Div played several violin duets and fuulamak they looked really really cool! We probably did nothing for the rest of the day until the evening. The wedding dinner was a 10-course Chinese dinner (which should be the standard fare for such an occasion I guess) which left us all full to bursting by the end of the night. I guarantee you, by the time I got back I put on some serious weight.

Also chanced a meeting with Zoon & Gina purely by coincidence, as we were on the way to the Opera House.

Christmas was a homely affair, just sitting around having dinner and chatting at ji yee's house. Followed by the opening of presents (bloody hell korg and ti were too 'big sized' to fit in the shirt I bought, so I'll have to exchange them some time this week) ji yee had a genius idea of singing to oldies ala karaoke by streaming videos off youtube. I think the parents were amazed we actually knew how to sing them, since the usual reaction to these kinds of songs would be "Whoa man, that's OLD!" But yeah in the spirit of giving we sure gave our all into singing horribly (most of us anyway)

Went to Pancakes on the Rocks the night before heading back, and boy the pancakes there really are heavenly! XD I won't miss a chance to go back there again. The food there wasn't too bad too, I remember having crepes, pork ribs, nachos and some seafood (shared of course).

Notable foodie locations in Sydney include:

the buffet at Star City (bucketloads of fresh prawns to die for! and the roasts weren't too bad)

fresh seafood (fresh, not cooked! except for maybe the squid rings) at the Fish Market

Pancakes on the Rocks (@ the Rocks, mind you!)

that seafood restaurant on Darling Harbour (to which I forgot the name =P it's the one on the end where the Maritime Museum is)

that HK-Chinese restaurant on Anzac Parade at Kingsford (I think it's called Red Hat) which serves really nice stuff (especially the porridge, wat tan hor & chow yin yong that actually passes my dad's test for noodle crispiness - it's pretty hard to pass, that one)

Didn't get to try the original fried Mars Bars. booey.

And did I tell you about the beach! It doesn't squeak like the one at Wilson's Prom, but the weather was perfect! Sun, breeze and green-blue seas as company, it was ecstasy. Although the occasional sight of half-naked, potbellied men were quite a sight to sore your eyes. And even rarer were the sunbakers in the nude. I didn't really notice until I walked past one, and I thought "Hey, there's something missing.."