We woke up bright and early today to meet up Ee Leng & Tsin for breakfast before Eel’s appointment to do her hair. We got all dressed up first, because the tea ceremony would be starting almost as soon as we got back to Eel’s apartment after her hair appointment. I was wearing my “Shoes of Death” aka my Aldo shoes, but I brought my Teva shoes just in case I had to switch halfway because of the pain, and here’s what the Aldos look like. Oh so pretty shoes, but oh the pain after awhile.

After Eel’s hair was done, we took a few shots of us, in her last few moments as a single woman! Doesn’t she look fancy, with her hair all pretty and her super cool outfit?

We caught a tram back to her apartment after that, and the tea ceremony began shortly after. Tsin was delegated the…tea announcer? The person who announces who is serving the tea, and who the recipient is. She had to call out all the family titles in Hokkien, which was quite funny. Eel’s mum had to stand next to her and whisper the titles in her ear. I was assigned the tea lady task, passing the cups to each person.

After that, we went off to Chen Po’s mum’s house for the tea ceremony for his family. Here’s a pic of some of us standing outside his house, waiting to go in. As you can see from the photo, it was really windy that day! I’m so glad I borrowed Eel’s longer jacket, before I went to Melbourne, I told her I had no formal jacket, so I wanted to borrow one from her.

We had lunch at Chen Po’s house, and then there was a break of a few hours before dinner in the city. It was held at Quanjude restaurant in the city, and this restaurant was supposed to be famous for it’s Peking duck. The first course consisted of the various parts of the duck, from the tongue, to the gizzards, down to the feet! There were so many courses after that, but we only got a chance to take pictures of a few of them. Most of the time, we were just too busy eating!

We had tons to eat at our table, especially since two of the people seated with us were the photographers, and they were away from the table quite a lot, as they had to follow the couple around and take photos of them.

There weren’t too many items during the dinner, Chen Po’s mum gave a speech in Mandarin, I think, and Chen Po & Ee Leng gave a speech as well. There were the usual “yam seng” toasts as well, where we tried our best to out-shout every other table, to prove our Malaysian-ness. All in all, it was a really nice, simple wedding, and I’m really glad I flew to Melbourne to attend, especially since I’ve known Eel since I was…11? That makes it about 16 years that we’ve been friends!

Anyway, after dinner, we still had Eel’s car which we had borrowed for the day, so we volunteered to drop Tsin off at her friend’s house at Lygon. After we had done that, we were on the way back home when we saw on the opposite side of the road….the gelati shop was back in business!

I told T to quickly turn the car around, and we made a short pit stop for some gelati. Yes, even though we were still stuffed from dinner! So, here’s me at the end of the day, doing what we’ve been doing throughout the whole trip, eating!

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