It’s probably a good thing this photo is blurry, but as you can vaguely see it’s the remains of a dead spider … on my office chair. I got the shock of my life when I stood up and saw this. At first I couldn’t quite figure out what it was so I asked one of my colleagues. She thought it was just grass and told me to relax but upon further inspection we confirmed it was in fact the remains of a spider, minus 1 leg. The missing leg was about 30 cm away in the middle of my chair. God only knows how that happened. I guess I just have a killer ass.

On the weekend I discovered that after a big night out, figs are a great pick me up, especially with ice-cream and affogato. And at $10 a box fresh from Flemington Markets, it was a steal! I think weekend trips to the markets will soon become a weekly tradition, for my parents, not me. There’s no way I’m waking up anytime before midday on the weekend. That’s just silly.

On CNY my grandma pulled out a bunch of her old cookbooks which, much to my disappointment, were all written in Indonesian. Being the ABC (Australian Born Chinese) that I am, my knowledge (or lack thereof) of any language except English left me worried that I’d never again eat these Asian delights.

In fear of a life without authentic home-made Asian desserts I asked my Grandma to teach me how to make some. The first on the list was Onde-Onde: sweet potato glutinous rice balls covered in coconut with palm sugar (Gula Melaka) inside.

It’s been years since my grandma’s made these and after giving it a shot, I can see why. Unlike cakes where you just chuck all the ingredients in a bowl, mix and bake; Onde-Onde involves kneading, rolling, balling, boiling and then rolling again.

The balls are mostly just glutinous rice flour, sweet potato and pandan juice. After kneading it to the right consistency (under the strict direction of the Masterchef) you roll it out and cut them in the small bits.

Each bit is then filled with palm sugar.

Then rolled into balls and ready to boil.

Once they’re boiled they’re rolled in fresh coconut shavings and you’re done.

The recipe isn’t exactly hard, it just takes a lot of time considering each ball is made individually. But it’s so worth it. As soon as I popped one into my mouth and the palm sugar came oozing out … drool …  I’d died and gone to heaven – kuih heaven.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the 2010 Good Vibrations line up: Salt-N-Pepa, Naughty by Nature, Busta Rhymes and – one of my favourites – The Killers.

We went to the Gold Coast GV which held a few pros and cons over the Sydney GV. The biggest pro was The Killers, who unfortunately pull out of the Sydney GV but made it to the Gold Coast.

Another pro was the layout, it’s a much smaller venue compared to Sydney making it easy to get around from stage to stage. Also, the main stage is at the bottom of a slope – making it easy to see over the sea of heads (especially with your slightly shorter friends).

The only crappy thing was the line to get in. Getting burnt shoulders while in a stinking hot queue for 45 minutes wasn’t a great start to the day. And to add to it there were groups of people with the “Oh, I’m trying to find my friend” excuse. Gr..

Once we were in it was all good. The day had a strong old school vibe with a heap of tracks whipped straight out of the 80s and 90s. I never thought I’d ever see Salt-N-Pepa live but I did, and they were awesome. They played all their top hits like Push it, Let’s talk about Sex, Whatta man, Shoop, and a killer mix of 90s classics.

Naughty by Nature went off! Everyone in the tent was bopping to the beat and singing “Hay – Ho – Hay – Ho”. They really know how to work the crowd. As you can see from the photo below, I didn’t dare venture inside the sweat infested tent. That’s the closest I could go without passing out from the aroma.

After a refreshing 2 minute storm to cool us down, we were all set for The Killers to take the stage. In one word, they were amazing! Brandon (the lead singer) has such an amazing voice that carried through all the high and low notes and remained constant right to the very end. Amazing.

After a long day at GV it was nice to have the next day to rest and relax by the ocean. This was the view from our apartment.

Beautiful. Funny thing is we never actually went in the water, we just enjoyed the view of it from our apartment.

I think we’re getting old!

Besides getting eaten alive by bugs and mozzies, our trip to the Gold Coast / Byron was awesome.

Most days were filled with fishing, or should I say “trying to fish”. We never actually caught anything big enough to take home but it was fun nevertheless. Perhaps one of the strangest things was when G pulled in this bizarre looking … fish? I’m not even sure if you would call it a fish.

It was so slimy that you can see our reflection in the top left shot. Gross. We were more than happy to toss that one back in the water.

You can’t actually see it in this picture, but for some strange reason there were heaps of fish gliding across the waves only metres from the shore. It looked like the fish were surfing and catching waves, which kind of made me jealous cause it looked like so much fun. I’ve never seen fish surf before, there must’ve been something in the water.

Other days were spent eating and Op-shopping. I think we went a little crazy on the books: 7 Vogue Entertaining magazines and 3 vintage copies of Jane Eyre. Lugging them home was my least favourite part of the trip.

On the flip side, one of the funniest things was waking up to this one morning:

And then this the following morning:

The poor puppies look so tired after shredding the futon to bits. Luckily they left just enough mess to be comfortable.

After a few nights in Byron we headed back up to the Gold Coast for more R and R at Q1 Resort and Spa – the world’s tallest residential building. Just looking up at the building made me dizzy.

I always thought Big Day Out was a really crazy and rowdy festival, which is why I never really wanted to go in the past. But for some reason this year I decided to give it a shot. Sure glad I did because it was is flipping awesome! Dare I say, best festival yet.

Anna kept calling me a nerd for laminating the set times and map but by the end of the day I think I convinced her that nerd are cool. Our copy of the set times was indestructible. Nerd 1 : Anna 0.

Now we originally had tickets to the Saturday show, but managed to swap over to the Friday show which worked out perfectly considering the crazy weather on Saturday where the temperature in the late afternoon dropped a whopping 15 degrees in just 1 hour. I reckon a lot of people attending the Saturday show would have gotten sick. The Friday show was great, yes the weather at the start of the day was a killer with temperatures rising as high as 40 degrees, but it did cool down a tiny bit in the afternoon.

When we first got in the heat unbearable, we were dripping with sweat and hadn’t even gone to see anyone yet. I really wanted to see Kasabian fittingly sing “I’m on fiiiiire…” but we seriously couldn’t bear the heat.

One of the highlights of the day was the set by Girl Talk. Known for his mashups, Girl Talk mixed an assortment sweet tracks ranging from The Chilli Peppers to Jackson 5, Crowded House to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, some old school RnB and he even managed to squeeze in some Kelly Clarkson. Random, but oh so fun.

After Girl Talk in the Boiler room we were so hot so we stopped by the Olympic flame for a much needed cool down. After that it was go go go where we raced from stage to stage to check out the major acts.

Dizzee Rascal was … BONKERS! He drew such a massive crowd and it was going absolutely crazy, it was a very impressive sight especially in the heat. You really couldn’t sit still during his set, you had to dance or at the very least bop your head … and then be dripping with sweat. Oh well, the music was just too good to care.

Lily Allen was up next, I was a bit skeptical about how her voice would carry at the main stage but she was great. She looked and sounded gorgeous. It’s a bit of a shame that she’s not going to continue performing but I’m glad I had the chance to see her live in action and really working the stage.

Jet, as always, were great. Calvin Harris made everyone dance their feet off. And Ladyhawke played with everyone’s delirium on her guitar with her Kiwi accent. It was a jam packed afternoon with so much to do and see, but there was still plenty more to come.

OMG Muse were amazing! When they came on stage all feelings of tiredness and exhaustion seem to disappear with the heavy sound of the drums and guitar. They really know how to captivate an audience, no matter how tired you are. It was amazing to experience Starlight live, I say ‘experience’ because it wasn’t just in the sound; it incorporated all your sense (well all except for maybe taste, you couldn’t really taste the song, but if you could I reckon it would taste pretty sweet). I’d fallen in love with this song over the past couple of months and I got the chills when they started to play the intro.

After that we quickly rushed to Boiler room to see Groove Armada. I have a much greater appreciation of Groove Armada now that I’ve seen them live. A lot of effort goes into their show and the vocals and the band are really talented. It was a great way to end the night Superstylin’.

I know I sound a bit like a raving lunatic but I really did have a great time. I think BDO is my new favourite festival. Can’t wait till BDO 2011.

I spent the weekend catching up with some mates over good drinks and good food. First up was Kuleto’s Bar, in Newtown. We arrived right on 6pm when happy hour starts and dived straight into it. When we ordered our drinks we thought the bartender kept stuffing up our order because he kept giving us 2 of everything. It wasn’t till later that we realised happy hour = 2-for-1 drinks not half price drinks.

After Kuleto’s we headed down King Street in the hunt for Thai food, being King Street there’s no shortage of Thai restaurants. We spent the night reminiscing about the good old high school days and coming to the realisation that we had quite a few bullies in our group. *cough* Sonja *cough*.

I was craving seafood so we did a quick dash to the Sydney Fish Markets. I love that place! There’s so much seafood and it’s dirt cheap. Total damage was only $26 for a seafood banquet for 2. If we had ordered the same amount at a restaurant it would have been at least triple that price!

There’s such an abundance of wildlife in the Byron area, from giant lizards to cane toads and a whole array of weird looking insects.

Every night this little green tree frog would come out and say hello. One night G went to the bathroom and saw the little fella floating in the toilet! We didn’t know what to do, so we just left it and the next morning it disappeared.We suspect it went for a swim in the pipes.

If he wasn’t in the toilet the little fella would just sit in the tree and taunt the puppies.

Sometimes it would go for a walk. (Check out the muscle on the leg).

Other nights it preferred the hammock.

Fatty!

After 17 glorious, relaxing, lazy days in Byron, I’m back in Sydney again. It’s going to take a while to readjust.

Byron’s one of my favourite places, the weather’s perfect, the beaches are beautiful and everyone’s so relaxed and chilled out.

Here’s some bits and pieces from the trip.

Most days were spent bumming on the beach or going fishing.

Or playing with the puppies – yes they’re puppies. They’re only 6 months old. On the left is Sunshine, she belongs to Gav and on the right is Dooby, Esta’s little princess, who is recovering from having a cyst removed on her head, hence the half shaved head.

These little puppies sure did rack up a bill for Jan and Esta. First Dooby had the cyst removed, then a few weeks later little Sunshine got sick.

We still don’t know what caused her sickness, but we suspect she ate a blue bottle or something bad at the beach. As soon as we got back from the beach she started to eat grass and didn’t stop for 4 hours – which is not a good sign. The vet took a scan of her belly and it looked like she’d eaten a cloth, but when they operated they found that Sunshine had eaten way too much grass, so much that it had turned solid in her belly and was making her more sick.

There are a lot of small country towns in the area. One that I thought was really cute was a place called Mooball. The petrol station and all the telegraph poles are painted with a cow print pattern.

There’s an old railway track that isn’t in use anymore, so we went walking along the tracks, just for fun.

Across the bridge we were met with a pack of cows who were actually on the wrong side of the fence. They kept looking at us suspiciously like we were going to try steal their milk or something. Paranoid cows… must be something in the air.

One morning we woke up and there was this giant lizard just chilling out the front. When someone (I can’t remember who) walked past the lizard it freaked out and came charging in my direction, I too freaked out and ran away. Man that thing was fast!

One of the great things about having friends that live in the area is that they know all the good spots.

One day we took an inflatable boat out on a tea tree lake and just bobbed around. The lake was amazing, it’s a deep burnt red colour and the temperature varies depending on how deep the water is. When you’re walking in shallow water the water’s real hot, but as it gets deeper the temperature drops.

Another hidden gem is Whites Beach. You have to drive off the main road down a dirt track to get there, then trek down the cliff.

It’s well worth the effort. We pretty much had the beach to ourselves.

On my last day Maree and Chris took us 4wd-ing at Border Ranges National Park which is at the border of NSW and QLD. While driving around we stumbled upon a few spots that had a bunch of bee hives. Just as well we were locked up in the car, there were heaps of bees.

At the top of the national park there’s the most amazing view of Mount Warning and the ocean.

The view was amazing and it was the perfect way to end a fabulous trip.

We headed to Balina for some Barefoot Bowls the other night, none of us actually knew how to play so that made it interesting. In fact we sucked so much that we had a bit of an audience watching us for pure entertainment value. Luckily there was no one else playing because we kept bowling into the next couple of lanes.

Beers were super cheap and came with these styrofoam stubby holders.

The game was neck and neck with Chris and G in the lead. In the end Chris took the game by one point, partly due to my sabotage. I tried to knock the rest of the balls away to leave mine the closest, instead I hit G’s ball out of the way to give Chris the win. I guess lawn bowls isn’t my sport.