Gavin Tan aka Gayvin Tan invited me to his wedding in December. He came back to Malaysia for mine. I definitely had to go for his.
We took Air Asia to Melbourne. It rained when we left the house and we were stuck in a 2 hours jam to LCCT, Sepang.
No trip is complete is complete without any oddity. While in the boarding room, we had a strange person kneeling with face down for a long time. We couldn’t make out whether she was a bag or a person. Suddenly, she woke up thinking that the plane has left and tried to run to the tarmac.
Melbourne city is not the city I used to know. It changed quite a lot. Artisan cafes have popped up in the city. The good ones usually have long queues. My favourite A1 Chinese restaurant is gone. No more egg chiffon duck rice.
My wife and I stayed at Wei Chen and Sui San’s place at Albert Street. It was formerly an old brewery and now converted into an apartment. Wei Chen had kindly vacated him room for us while he slept in the living room.
I also took the opportunity to meet two of my business associates in Melbourne. One of them was nice enough to invite me to their office. The use colour coded system for their files. Each category has a different colour. It made their office pretty colourful.
We spent a lot of our time at artisan coffee joints trying what the Hipsters call “soul food”. To me, it’s basically food with plenty of bacon, potatoes or butter.
And it’s all awesome but I came back few KGs heavier.
After Gavin and Christina’s wedding, my wife and I made our way to Sydney via Tiger Airways. We stayed at Sui Lin’s place at the city. We did the usual touristy things.
We visited one of my buddies in Castlehill, Sydney. He cooked us dinner.
After Sydney, we went back to Melbourne and plonked at Sui San and Wei Chen’s place again. Lynnzter and Mid Sized Ben (both got married this year too) organised a dim sum lunch with the Melbourne gang at Tai Pan at Doncaster East.
They even serve battered durian. Gavin Tan is not a fan of durian so I made sure his hands smell of durian before leaving the place. I rubbed some durian on his hands while he wasn’t looking. WAHAHA.
Wei Chen sent us to the airport on the last day. The flight back was rather uneventful except that the lanolin cream that I bought for my mother got confiscated (6 bottles!). It seems that I cannot bring in any liquid exceeding 250g into the departure lounge. Strangely, the same lanolin was sold in the departure lounge!
Other than lanolin, I bought my stash of coffee beans!
Anyway, the trip was awesome. Many thanks to friends who gave their time and space to comfort and entertain us.