Thankfully, Eel’s wedding was yesterday, and not today! We woke up to the sound of wind blowing through the trees, and it was drizzly for most of the day. CS actually went out bike riding, because he was meeting some friends. One hour before he was supposed to come back, we heard footsteps up the stairs, and he came in, and said the wind was so strong, he was afraid it would blow him into the river!

We went grocery shopping with the extra time that we had, because he said that he would cook us dinner. I love grocery shopping, particularly overseas, because I get to see all the different food items that they have. This time round, we didn’t get too much, as we were leaving to NZ soon. We picked up a “few” things in case we got hungry whilst driving in NZ.

We went down to the city for yam cha @ Shark Fin House, and met up with Rex, Preema, her boyfriend Jason, and another friend of theirs. I’ve been craving the prawn salad ever since I left Australia! Funny thing is, like the jam donuts from Vic Mart, it didn’t taste as good as I remembered. The best part was catching up with everyone that we hadn’t seen in ages! It was particularly weird talking to Rex, he looks the same, but instead of talking the same, he now has a strong Aussie accent.

After lunch, we had..erm…tea? Haha, we went to Koko Black and had chocolate drinks. The concept is really similar to Theobrama back in Malaysia, it has chocolate drinks, desserts, etc.

Back at home a few hours later, we sat down to enjoy the pasta dinner that CS cooked for us. Kransky sausage pasta, I think he called it? It was pretty yummy, too. According to Steph, that’s the only dish he knows how to cook, so good thing that he only cooked one meal for us!

And so ended our day 4. We’re off to Christchurch the next day already!

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!

4 days since I’ve arrived in Melbourne, and I’m so sure that I’ve put on weight already. Our MAS flight was uneventful, except that the aircon vents from the front rows were pointing directly at my face the entire journey. T tried asking the dude in front of us to either point it at himself, or turn it off, but he didn’t seem to understand. So, I slept with the blanket on my face for most of the flight.

Ee Leng picked us up from the airport, and brought us to her apartment, which is on Swanston Street, about 10 mins walk away from Vic Mart. So of course, that was the first place we headed off to. It was so nostalgic, being back in Vic Mart after so many years! The first thing we did was to buy the jam doughnuts from the truck outside. We have fond memories of those doughnuts! For some reason, it just didn’t taste that good this time round. I’m not sure whether it’s because it’s really not that good anymore, or our expectations were just too high.

We also got cherries, dried fruit, yogurt sultanas…and then went off to meet another friend for lunch. There, we had a massive burger at Grill’d and a plate of yummy fries to share.

After lunch, we headed back to Ee Leng’s house to help her make custard puffs which she wanted to server during the tea ceremony over the weekend (which we of course sampled whilst making)! Dinner was at Lygon, where we had a few pizzas and pastas to share.

We made a mistake with the pizza, though. We ordered this pasta, which can be shared out amongst everyone, and you can choose three types of pastas that you would like. Everyone was calling out the different ones, and we ended up with three pastas, and all of them were cream based! Super full after the dinner, but we wanted to go for gelati. After all, how can you go to Lygon and not have the gelati?

Most disappointingly, the gelati shops were closed for winter! The sign said that they would re-open mid August, though, which should be around now. We tried to have dessert at this new place called Koko Black, but the queue time was 25 mins, which was just too long for us, especially standing outside during winter! So, we made our way back home for the night.

The next day, we went to Vic Mart again. I wanted to pick up a pair of tights for the wedding. I planned to wear a short dress, and I wasn’t about to brave the winter with bare legs! We walked around for a bit longer this time, and tried out some of their fresh yogurt. They had this stall which sells different flavours of yogurt. I swear I wasn’t planning on eating more, but the lady was so friendly, and offered us some to try. It was really yummy, so of course, I ended up with a cup. The top flavour was passionfruit, and the bottom was mixed berries.

For lunch, we had Jap food at one of the many Japanese stalls around the city, this one was called Sushi Sushi. Original name, eh? It wasn’t that fantastic, the rice was really cold, and some bits were hard. Probably because it was an open area, and the cold winter wind was blowing inside.

After lunch, we walked around the city a bit more, seeing all the new places that have sprung up since we left, like QV, and the new Melbourne Central. We were walking alongst Swanston Street and we saw this wood building, and wondered what that was. In turned out to be the newly rennovated Melbourne Central! Well, when i say newly rennovated, that’s because it wasn’t done yet when we were there 6 years ago.

Of course, we had to make a stop for Boost Juice at Melbourne Central! Here’s me having my juice, on the funky chairs that they have all over the place (we’ve had about 3 Boost Juices already since we arrived!).

Let’s see…after that, we went for dinner, although we weren’t remotely hungry yet. Melbourne’s become a lot busier than I remembered, it was pretty difficult to get places to eat. We ended up at a pub for some pub food. I half expected to get carded, and had my hand on my passport all ready to show them that I was legal, but surprisingly they didn’t ask me my age. We had a big plate of nachos to share, and mains all around. So, as my blog title says… *burp*!

It’s now two days later, and I’ll blog about Ee Leng’s wedding another time, but everything else I’ve done, revolves around food. Is it a wonder that my pants are starting to feel tight?