fuchsia fragments: family gathering

Merry Christmas from SG to SYD!

12/27/2016 02:50:00 pm

Ending with a Bang

2/16/2016 09:45:00 am

It has been a very busy final few days in Sydney with barely any downtime at all.

Had three full days of workshops and training at the Spit. It is a beautiful location however needing to get to the office by 8 AM is kind of hard. And the bus actually left without people – wow. The first day we had 8 hours of training plus a dinner and networking evening. That was excellent but getting home from Chowder Bay is again a difficult feat. The training is definitely ‘transformational’ and unlike any other seminar that you would expect Finance experts to go to. Another thing about these events is that you will never go hungry… in fact, I’m pretty sure there is a high probability that you will gain weight. There’s breakfast Danishes and yoghurt on arrival, freshly baked cookies for morning tea, lunch buffet with an extensive range of salad and two hot options followed by fruit and cheese platters and afternoon tea is usually another sweet option. Of course, always served with a huge selection of tea, coffee and other cold beverages.

On the last day, we were treated to a team event and my boss may have potentially blown her yearly budget on this one afternoon! A chartered 4 hour cruise with canapes and drinks on a boat! Wow so amazing – we are definitely very fortunate to have her look after us (she is sacrificing her business class travel this year to save money!). The weather was hot and sunny with a cool breeze at times – absolute perfection. I really enjoyed myself and the boat was certainly big enough so you only had to chat to the people that you wanted to. This was followed by drinks at Bungalow 8 and it was over a year ago that I’d been there during the Christmas Party the year before. It was not going off… nevertheless, was there for a few hours and good to get to know other colleagues from interstate, especially those that I don’t work with directly.

Friday was the day where running around doing chores really takes it out of you. it was a hot day and driving around Sydney in Friday traffic (who would have thought?) makes everything seem so much harder. Got to have lunch with my parents and sister though – Vietnamese!!! I am going to miss pho and crispy chicken and bbw so much in Tokyo. I reckon Vietnamese is one of my favourite types of cuisine. Picked up my tank of helium which was enough to fill 100 balloons and about 20 enormous foil balloons that I bought off eBay. Winning… my sister was really concerned that we wouldn’t be able to use the existing nozzle on the tank and that we were going to run out of helium. Neither of those things happened but the back up plan was to go get them filled up in the shop and pay for it. We got our whole pig for the spit… and you are definitely desensitized when you see the animal. Salted it, iced it, dried it and got it ready for the morning to throw on the spit. Roasting a whole animal is a challenge: they are heavy, its raw, the spit is HOT, the rod needs to go through the animal precisely… it really is harder than you imagine. Anyway, I really want to say a huge thank you to my coz and Albert for helping on Friday and Saturday. Seriously could not have done it without you guys.

Saturday: party time! Can I please have more sleep? Got about 5 hours but getting up at 7 AM to get the fire going and mount the spit is kind of weird. We got it on just before 9 which meant we were on time. Our basting sauce had too much sugar and soy so it turned the pig black pretty quickly (it wasn’t burnt but you can really tell that the skin was charred) and we probably tried to over insure ourselves too much by getting the fire way hotter than it probably should have been. No matter because by 6 PM the pig and cooked and moist and freaking delicious. And yes, we had CRACKLING! And as usual, Asian mother means 50 people invited – cater for 100. The food. And Asian people don’t listen!!! NO GIFTS means… NO GIFTS! And it was not bring a dish. Why was everyone bringing a dish? Appreciated but it means you all have to take boxes of food home. We seriously could have had a lunch session and a dinner session and we would still have food leftover…

I am being quite hypocritical when I say the above as I actually made lots of things for a dessert table knowing that it will go to waste – I just wanted pretty pictures. The cake pops were made from the tops of the cake and the macarons were the culls from an event a few weeks earlier. The kids loved the jelly and the strawberry tree was so pretty but again everyone was so full of the meat and seafood that they barely had any room left for sweets. The best part of the night was spent outdoors by the spit and then playing with bubbles and sparklers with the kids and Maxxie. What I wouldn’t give to be 4 or 5 again… or a well-loved puppy. Such a carefree life!

Taking photos was another fun part of the night as we had a very keen amateur photographer in Carmen’s father. Thank you uncle! You bring humour and professionalism to the role in spades! It really was a great party and I think everyone had a really good time. The kids got to take balloons home (hilarious when you try to fit two gigantic helium aeroplanes into a Kluger already seated with 7 people… hahaha), everyone doggy bagged, cake was a hit, kids had fun (Ethan did a poop just before leaving and his parents had already packed his bag in the car… he seemed really proud of himself too which made it more funny), dogs had fun and the clean up began! This was one event where I was glad most things were disposable but there was a lot of garbage bags at the end of it. I was hydrating myself during the party more than I was eating. They say that the organisers of a party do not get to enjoy themselves – I kind of see where that comes from as you are too busy making sure everyone else is well fed and hydrated and having a good time!

Needless to say Sunday was a day of doing nothing except packing. My bag ended up being 30.3 kg talk about using up your allowance to the max! Who knew it was so hard (I actually think I did not pack any casual sweaters… oops, guess I will have to buy one on the weekend). Everything seemed to fit which was good. I guess I should look forward to unpacking now that I have arrived? I requested an upgrade but was declined – the flight was absolutely full which was so sad for me. I had an aisle seat but I actually think the window seat is better for sleeping. I didn’t get much sleep as there were constantly people walking up and down the aisles. Thankfully, we arrived early so I got to catch 3 hours in the apartment before work. It feels weird to sleep until 9:20 on a weekday (11:20 Sydney time no less). So lucky I got to rest as I think I would be shattered otherwise.