Sydney festival - 365 appreciations

Really enjoy the Sydney festival proved by the Sydney council each year. There are some surprises waiting for you around the corner. My friends and I went to this reflection thing at darling harbour the other day and it was so much fun. Basically it's a house drawn on the ground and they put a mirror on top so when you were lying on the ground it shows like you are climbing up the house in the mirror reflection. It was super cool. The only thing tho is that you can only stay there for 4 mins and we were the only adults need to be evicted by the volunteers....

Tennis - 365 appreciations

Love watching tennis! The Australian open is one of the sports game that I look forward to every year. I don't know how to play tennis but watching people playing tennis is fascinating. I cannot understand how can they stand for a match that lasts for 5 hours! I don't even want to sit for 5 hours. Let alone running around to chase a ball for such a long time! And the tennis players they have the most amazing minds! They are so determinate and so focus! Honestly if I know I m going to lose I will be like ok I don't want to play I m going home now bye! But we never seen a tennis player quit. They just keep playing and playing and play for the best. I m always inspired by them

Music - 365 appreciations

After a shit day at work, the moment I enjoyed the most, was when I started my car, I put the volume to as loudest as I possibly can, and sing along when I m driving home.

Do you have that moment that you just want to sing your lungs out? I always have. I got pull over twice coz the police thought I was drunk. But actually all I want to do is to sing!

I appreucate music. When that music plays, all the memories come back, good or bad, and it just brought me to another zone. Billy Joel said music itself is healing. It's an explosive expressive I humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from. Everyone loves music.

Australia - 365 appreciations

I always tell Iain Australian are so lucky. Everytime we drive pass the national park, I m amazed with the beauty of the Australia nature. I know lots of people take it for granted. It's not until you go overseas and witness the living condition in some of the countries, then you realized Australia is truely beautiful. 

Parenthood - 365 appreciations

(Photo of my darling husband when he was a baby.)

My best friend had lost her baby girl 2 days ago and she was a stillborn baby. 

My friend wanted a baby for a long time. When I knew she was pregnant I cried. I never want to have a baby myself but I really do appreciate parenthood. I would not be brave enough to face all the challenges any parents are facing. I respect anyone who not only gave someone a life but also gave that person a chance to enjoy this beautiful world.

Having a baby is hard. It's luck. It's destiny. It's a huge job given by the god. I appreciate any parents. Sing, double traditioal and non traditional parents, you guys are doing a fantastic jobs.

365 appreciations

I read an article on the newspaper the other day. It said a lday was going through a hard time and she started to write this diary/ blog thing about stuffs that she appreciate in life. And by writing the diary, it actually helped her to quit drinking.

After reading the news, I thought to myself, what a nice thing to do writing about things that we appreciate. Very often we take things for granted and never thought about them until we lose them.

Forunately I am not going through any life-time-crisis but I m very determined to start writing things that I appreciated. I am going to write one thing a day and see how it goes. I think it's going to be awsome because that just remind me everyday that I should be thankful.

It was my husband birthday yesterday and I think he would be the first person that I would like to thank. He makes me a much better person and without him I will not appreciate myself as much as I do now. I appreciate everything he did for us and I cannot stop myself to tell the world how much I love him. He is my sweetheart and he forever will be. 

Happy 2014

I can't believe half of January is almost gone!
What have I been doing?
Where did my time went?

2013 was a fantastic year for us.
We got married.
Iain got a promotion at work.
We went to Russia.
It's an adventure year and it's a happy year for us.

What's your new year resolution?
We don't have any this year. 
It almost feels like every year we set a goal
but it's always about something else then the goal vanished.
We think it's more important to live for the moment
and be happy.

Have done some projects for this year already.
My friend's Jasmine's baby shower invite and Mandy's wedding invite.
Both of them are beautiful.

I enjoyed making invitation for friends. 

I just love to see their happy faces when they saw the final products.

It's kind of rewarding of what I do.

Hope the invitation thing can go a step further in 2014.

cheers,

suki 

Beautiful Christmas Gift

Apple has this beautiful TV ad for christmas and I absolutely loved it. This young man was misunderstood by his family that he only stuck his head with his phone and not bonding with the family. But it turns out he is making this wondering surprise video gift for his family. Sweet!

Have a wonderful time everyone. 

Summer means

I really love summer in Australia! That means it's beach time. It's about going out. Having heaps of mangos an watermelon! And of course packing my Christmas orders! Love printing calendars for rerun customers! They make me feel special.

Nelson Mandela

Change my race - SBS documentary

We watched the SBS documentary Change My Race last night. I was shocked by some of the Asian how they see themselves and some of the outrages comments from the parents. It's sad that we don't even like our own race. We feel shameful how we look like. I felt the same when I first came to Australia but honestly I've never gone to that extreme.

It's a face that will never been change. I am an Asian. No matter how well my English is and how much I know about Australia. I will always be called an Asian. However after the 12 years that I spent in Australia, I feel like most of the Australian don't care what race you are as long as you can blend in with the Australian culture. I am always welcomed by my friends and colleagues. I have never feel like I am an outsider. There are so many things that I have to learn about Australia but most of the Australian are very accepting and willing to learn our culture as well.

Looking at all the young women gone through the plastic surgeries, do they look THAT Aussie after the plastic surgeries? Iain didn't even noticed what the difference was. He was like "What is a double eye lids?"

I think it's more important that people can fit in the society. Don't listen to their parents or peers about the stupid surgeries. Just be yourself and love the way you are.

Love Christmas shopping

Wow! You can buy shoes from a machine?

It's a beautiful world.

Among all the places we have been to in this trip, Helsinki is the city not as charm as the other cities but it's the most friendly one. It has the best tourists signs. Everyone speaks English and friendly. Everything is similar to Australia. It's a small city but easy access to everything. Actually I should say easy access to everywhere. It's a 2 hours train trip to Saint Petersburg. It's few hours from Estonia by cruise and it's an overnight trip to Sweden. I m so jealous of the Finnish. Coz it takes at least 6 hours for us to get out of Australia! Helsinki has a bit of everything. You can see a Russian style building on one side of the road then you see some European style building on the other side. The constant changes of the senceary makes this city very interesting. The wooden red house in northern Finland are so cute! It may be one of the coldest place in the world but people are so warm and friendly that make you want to stay here forever. 

Russia is a crazily beautiful. Unfortunately the weather wasn't that good when we were there but the grey sky gave it another kind of beauty. I have to say the Russia are a bit cold compare to Finnish. But our metro tour guide was wonderful. Our landlord in Moscow was amazingly nice and helpful. Walking in Moscow and Saint Petersburg were never boring. It's like you are walking in a live museum. It's amazing. A romantic day dreamer like me can spend years wonder around this city and never get bored. Looking at the buildings around you and the people around give you unlimited imagination. Ideas were bursting in my head that I worry I will have a heart attack. All the giant beautiful buildings with bright colors and detailed decoration. It must takes a lot of effort to maintain the history of the cities. I love Russia. This is the second time I visited this country and once again it won my heart. I m jealous of the children of Russia. I m jealous they are given the opportunities to grow up with the history. We saw lots of children in the Winter Palace. They can go to the museum for free. I saw them doing live drawings in front of an old painting. How lucky they are! 

We haven't spent enough time in China, Sweden and Estonia. But all these countries have such strong characters we will never forget. 

Sweden was the only country has that multicultural feeling similar to Australia. It's a vibrant country. We can feel the energy coming from everywhere. People are riding a bike. People are shopping. People having a good time in the restaurant. The energy of the city just shock you in the face! We would like to spend more time in Sweden next time. It's a beautiful country.

I m amazed with all the bad stories we have heard about traveling in Russia and Europe and nothing happened to us.We have only experienced some scam in China. It's not even seriously at all.  We were safed. We haven't had any bad experience with people. I guess the world isn't too bad after all. As long as you travel with care and respect. You can still have an amazing experience like ours. I love traveling. I love overseas. Without all these difference experiences we will never know how good our home is. 

The last few days

The last few days of our trip was peaceful and relax. We had some McDonald delivery of course as well as Chinese famous hotpot. We had a wonderful time in China. 

It's such a shame that the last day of our trip was very dusty and polluted. The air quality is not good at all. We had plenty of time but we didn't want to go out when we looked at the sky. 

China is beautiful. It has a beauty that no where in the world can offer. The people and the way things works in China are strange and sometimes I cannot understand, but I guess if you can work it out, it's an amazing country to travel to or maybe to live in. 

Would you like to wrap your suitcase?

Since our flight has been cancelled so we spent like 10 hours at the airport waiting. We saw lots of people wrap their suitcases for no reason!! On the noticed board it said "we recommend you to wrap your suitcases just in case it got damaged; or for people accidentally open your suitcase". 

OMG! Why do you mean by accidentally open?? We got scared a little bit so we went there for a wrap. It costs 300 rubles each that's about $10 Australian dollars! We spent all our money on food already so we didn't wrap our stuffs.

Later we found out it's better not to wrap anything coz we saw a Chinese woman has over weight bags and she has to unwrap everything! Imagine that twenty bucks that you paid!!! And we saw all the troubles she gone through with unwrapping the whole thing! Maybe we should just let people accidentally open my suitcase.

I can't believe what happened!

We had our last meal at Helsinki market. Looks like Finnish loves their sausages. That's yummy tho. 

So that's it. Our three weeks trip has almost came to an end. Sitting at the market. Looking at the water and the islands over the water. It's beautiful and calm. I wonder will I ever have a chance to come back to Finland. 

When everything seems wonderfully calm I can't believe what happened to us at the airport. Our flight from Helsinki to China would stop over in Moscow for a night. We tried to check in online the night before and it only allowed us to check in the flight to Moscow not to Beijing. So we thought yeh maybe it's not quite 24 hours yet so we will let the people at the airport do it instead.

The lady at the airport tried to check in for us but she couldn't find the flight. It turned out the flight we booked has been cancelled and we were scheduled to another flight at night! What the hell??? She said the airline has emailed us three times and also SMS us. I checked my email EVERYDAY! I received no email from them even in the junk mail!! Unbelivalbe!! Even when I checked in online last night it still shown our flight the next day is at 2pm not 22 o'clock! I can't believe this happened to us. I m glad that we can fly out before mid night otherwise Iain will have a problem with his visa! 

Well that's not it. I tried to contact Novotel in Beijing and tell them our flight has been delayed we will check in one day later. The bloody reception said she can't help us and I have to call them back at 9am to talk to reservation! 

I emailed Agoda and the hotel to explain the situation. Agoda replied me the next morning said it's alright but the hotel replied me they are going to cancel the booking! Bloody shit! I told them why we can't check in on time and they replied the booking policy said no changes and cancellation! I almost exploded! I told them it's not our fault that the flight has been cancelled. So she finally agreed to extend our check in time to 12 noon the next day but we still have to pay for the first night. Oh my god!!! She didn't even know I have already paid the reservation!!! What the F has she been doing? When I told her we have already paid then she said everything is fine! OMG.... Why people can be so retarded?

Anyway. We arrived Beijing safely at the end.

Finland to Sweden

It worked out the price of the hotel for a night in Helsinki is more expensive than taking a cruise to Sweden! Unbelivavle isn't it? We booked Viking line for the cheapest room which is 90 euro and with this price we can't even book a three star hotel in Helsinki. Before we checked in, we asked the lady if we can upgrade so we paid 20 euro for a better room! What a bargain!

Anyway I m really glad that we went to Sweden coz it is really beautiful ! Shame that we were there for only a few hours. I think people should at least spend 2 days for this city.

We spent a long time in the Old Town. It has heaps of souvenirs shops and many places for good photos! Well honestly if I spent one more day there I will get bankrupt. Even their souvenirs are so pretty! Not like those made-in-china Australia souvenirs we have at Peddy market! 

Anyway, Stockholm's public wifi sucks! Unlike Russia and Finland, you need a SIM card in your phone to connect to wifi. So if you turn your phone to flight mode you can't have wifi. McDonald is the only place we found doesn't have this problem tho.

Anyway I met an old friend Kristina at Stockholm. I have known her for a long long time. It was from the day when writing a letter was the only way to communicate. And for 18 years I have never met my pen pal from Sweden. you can imagine how excited I was when I finally met her! It's a shame that our time for each other was only short as we have to go back to the boat by 4.30.

When we walked back to our cruise, we thought its a 15 mins walk but it turned out to be a 30 mins walk so we have to run for our lives!! Imagine if we missed the boat and all our stuffs are in our room? And we were catching the same day flight back to Russia!!! Lucky we made it. Just!! When we sat down in our room the cruise started moving!