The pr0n party

I don't know how to explain my weekend...after our big drunk get together the other week, Moishii came up with this brilliant idea of hosting a pr0n party. Basically, it was a drunken get together where Moishii will screen his pr0n collection on the TV. Yeah......this was going to require A LOT of alcohol......

Firstly, soak the fruit in spirits of some sort

Add to a MASSIVE bowl with other alcohol

Get someone to do a taste test

Decorate the room

We didn't want a repeat of Moishii's 23rd where people were throwing up all over the sinks (Kitchen and laundry) so we decided some food was in order.

Throw together a small Greek salad

I said SMALL!!

Make some Cacik / Tzatziki

Bring out the chips, pasta, pastries and fetta as mezze

Tuscan Chicken and sundried tomato, and spinach and fetta

Get everyone full and liquored up

Start screening the entertainment......

That's errrr...the "cleanest" photo I could put up. *cough*

Yeah......anyhooooo. After a few hours of "entertainment", we finally had it with everyone and kicked them out of the house. Only one person refused to leave. And that was Matt. Yes its Drunken Mama. Moishii ended up grabbing Matt's shoes and hurling them onto the front lawn before kicking his ass out his front door. LITERALLY throwing him out of the house. Matt went sprawling over the front lawn. If only I knew what was happening, I would've grabbed the camera. But all I remember was that I was lying in the dark trying to get some peace and quiet, when I heard a lot of screaming followed by loud thumping and cracking noises. Matt refused to leave until he got some free lollies off Moishii, so Moishii started hurling packets of hard candy at Matt's head. After finally getting Matt out of the house, me, Moishii, Levi and Cherry all decided to go to bed. Well, not together anyway. Moishii gave each of us a room.

10mins after lights out, the door bell rings. Well all stumble out of our individual bedrooms all bleary-eyed thinking who the hell is ringing the door bell at 2:30am. Moishii checks the door only to find the door step empty. We stood around for a good 10secs thinking who the hell pulls pranks like that besides me and Moishii. Suddenly the light bulb on top of my head went *ding*. It might be Matt. I run into the room, tripping on a table and almost putting my head through a glass window and quickly check the streets. Matt's car was still parked across the street.

I race out of the room and scream "ITS MATT!!!" and we all race into Levi's room and threw open the massive window and looked out at the lawn. And there was Matt jumping up and down and screaming his head off. At this point, Cherry though the appropriate action was to jump into bed with the half naked Levi, leaving me and Moishii to deal with the mess.

We decided that ignoring him would be best. That is until he started taking the hard candy and started throwing them at the windows. We threw open the curtains, screamed bloody murder at Matt to go home and went back to bed. 2 mins later, the doorbell rings. We run back to Levi's room and find that Cherry is still in bed with him. We'll deal with that later, we've got a lunatic on the front lawn. Matt goes completely beserk on the front lawn, jumping up and down and trying to strip whilst screaming that he wanted a hug from us. I decided this a Oishii and Moishii production time. I stormed through Moishii's house, threw his bedroom door open and grabbed his video camera. I screamed at Moishii that it was time to fight back. Moishii practically trips down the stairs trying to follow me through the house whilst I was screaming "THE LOLLIES!!! I WANT MORE LOLLIES!! WHERE DID YOU PUT THE LOLLIES!?!?!"

Moishii got a few cartons of hard promotion lollies from work. These lollies taste like the bottom of an old sugar barrel. For some reason,, Matt likes them. But I also think that's because they're free. Well, if Matt likes them so much, he can have them. I've got the camera running at this stage, and Moishii loads his arms up with about 40 packets of these lollies. He throws the front door open and starts hurling pack after pack of lollies at Matt. These lollies make great ammunition. Some of the packets break open, and all you see is this great shower of lollies pelting Matt like it was a machine gun stuck on auto-fire. When Moishii runs out of ammo, he slams the door shut and disappears for a few seconds. Meanwhile, I've still got the camera running and Matt decides to run smack bang into the door and does a blowfish on the glass. Moishii comes tearing through the hallway with something in his hand. The door goes flying open, Matt starts running, Moishii hurls a glass of leftover wine at Matt. God, good thing he didn't get his hands on the punchbowl. There was still a good 2L of punch left. If that hit Matt square in the face, it would've been a kodak moment.

The door closes and retreat back to our rooms, thinking Matt finally got the message of "GO HOME!!". We walked back upstairs only to see Cherry cuddled underneath the blanket with Levi practically doing it in Moishii's parent's bed. EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW. The doorbell suddenly rings which was a perfect distraction from the fact that Cherry has decided to make herself a permanent fixture in Levi's bed.

This time, Moishii has had it. He storms into the garage and starts tearing through the boxes looking for a chainsaw. Luckily he didn't find the chainsaw, but its not like he knew how to start it anyway. He finds a handsaw and chases Matt down his front lawn screaming bloody murder. Bottles and more lollies are hurled around before Moishii comes running back in. Matt decides to slam himself against the glass door again and proceeds to lick it. God we need to disinfect the door now.

We decided that it was time to truely ignore Matt and hope he would go away before we call the cops on him. It was now close to 3am. Since we were still awake from the screaming and running, we grabbed a torch and stormed into Levi's room to find the 2 of them almost naked. Moishii decides to jump in and breakup whatever was happening. Luckily this was all captured on tape. Again, we hear more screaming from Matt. We peeked through the window andsaw him finally pick up every single packet of lollies and loaded them into the car before driving off. THANK GOD! PEACE AT LAST! Well, unless there was going to be sounds coming out of Levi's room.

I didn't wake up til late in the day when Cherry decided to quietly slip out of the house. Apparently Levi also quietly slipped out of the house. Hmmmmm.

Anyway, this is the aftermath:

Not sure if you can see the massive 4L cask at the end of the table...but yeah. It was a big night. Lots alcohol, lots of pr0n on tv, some pr0n in real life and Matt. I think everyone was all pr0ned out by the end of the night.....and woke up with a massive hangover. I took me and Moishii a good 2-3 hours to even get ready to go out.....

I love Big Johns...

...the restaurant that is. I've been meaning to go to Big John's ever since I've heard of them. Which has been a good 4-5 years, but I've never made the effort to go all the way to San Souci. Considering all the stuff that has been happening with Moishii, we didn't get much of a chance to catch up last week (Ok, drunken bashes do not count), so we decided to make a night of it and head on over to Big John's.

They serve Moet et Chandon!

Take away pizza menu

We knew that Big John's serve massive amounts of food, but I didn't really believe they were THAT massive. Plus, the traffic getting there was atrocious. By the time we were served, I was about to eat a whole cow. And I almost did!

Garlic french sticks

You can't have a catch up without alcohol - Lambrusco

King Prawn Caesar salad

It wasn't a "Chicken night" so we had asked them to change the chicken to King Prawns. The prawns were so.....prawny! And they were bursting in your mouth!

A photo to show how big the serves REALLY are

Spaghetti Marinara

The pasta was HUGE! Like HOOOOOOGE!! Luckily, with all the shells that came with it, it wasn't too painful to finish. But I didn't touch the 1/2 crab it came with. That's because I was busy with the bugs, mussels, scallops, squid and massive tiger prawns hidden amongst the pasta.

Veal Scallopine

Oh, my gosh. You see that deep fried aracini ball in the top left of the plate? That was a tennis ball sized ball. There was about 5-6 slices of veal, and I reckon thats about 1/2kg of vegetables on that plate!!

Bugs!!

This also came with a ball of aracini, but no 1/2kg of veggies thank goodness.

Champagne Prawns

OK, this came with the 1/2kg of veggies AND the ball. Good thing that prawns aren't that filling....but then considering how much food they serve, everything is filling!! We practically had to roll out of there!

I actually really enjoyed Big John's. When I was trying to find their website (They don't have one) I ended up looking through the reviews at eatability. And they got shocking reviews. Why did I still go? Because I always take those reviews with a grain of salt. They complain about the long lines, the horrible food and the horrible service. The problem with 90% of those complaints is that people are going there on a Friday or Saturday night, when they're WELL KNOWN to be packed until bursting at the seams. Very simple solution, DON'T GO ON WEEKENDS!! We went on a weeknight and there was no wait and it wasn't crowded. I can understand why people would complain if they rocked up on a weekend.

Yes the place can get very very packed. 75% of the seats were taken on a Wednesday night! Imagine a weekend when the place is completely packed, the pizza oven going full boil and lack of air conditioning. Yes, Big John's has a lot to improve on. A bigger shop, air conditioning, maybe learning to take Credit Card/EFTPOS, and I would imagine on the weekend, better service and more organisation. BUT, Big John's isn't about that. The food is NOT authentic Italian, but the food is good. The quality of service isn't that great, but the quantity served is GIGANTIC! When restaurants are busy, quality slips, but I think everyone should give Big John's a go. Go on a week day, experience their food and service when there isn't a mob of hungry people waiting outside demanding blood.

Ouch!

Who said Volleyball is a non-contact sport?

It sucks being short and on the receiving end of an elbow..... Could be worse though. I could have panda eyes. Right now it looks like I had an accident with a magic marker.....or really poorly done runny makeup.....

Strange that I got elbowed in the cheekbone, but thats not where it's bruise. Oh wells. Lets hope it clears up for next Friday's massive company party. There will be plenty of photographers there.....

Bridge walk with a hangover

Moishii had invited me over to his place on Saturday for some boozing, food and an offer to crash after getting too trashed. Of course this offer was too good to refuse. I drove over to his place in the pouring rain and quickly headed off to the local bottle shop and picked up a "few" bottles of wine.

After looking like complete alcoholics grabbing wine off the shelves, we put on this big act by talking out loud infront of the cashier:

Me: "So how many people is coming tonight? 6? 7?"
Moishii: "No...more like 8"
Me: "Oh, we're going to need more wine then....."

In actual truth, we'll be lucky to have 4 people....it was mainly me, Moishii and Josh. Cherry was possibly going to drop by...but 6 bottles for the 3 of us...plus shots:



Whilst we were enjoying a few drinks and waiting for Josh to arrive, we decided to go through a few of Moishii's travel photo albums:

Thats about half of his photos

His dog.....the mop

As it got later, we figured we better start cooking dinner. Not too bad for a few drunks aye?

Greek salad

Chicken Schnitzel, Potato and Gravy, Veggies and Greek Salad

After having a completely MASSIVE night at Moishii's and getting less than 6 hours sleep, I dragged my sorry ass out of bed around 8am and managed to get home before 9am. (With a quick stopover at Maccas for hangover food). I was showered and ready to leave the house at 9:15am and we were off for the 75th Birthday Harbour Bridge walk with the whole family.

Free memorabilia caps

Even the horses got into the spirit

We were one of the earlier groups to go over the bridge and hence it wasn't crowded and gave us plenty of room to take photos. I didn't take too many photos on my camera....

"Whaaaa???"

Let me finish.....my brother in law borrowed a Digital SLR for the day, and I refused to give him the camera back after I "borrowed it for a quick look". I need to get the photos off him and I'll put them up later. Here's one or two out of the very few photos I took:

Waving to the bridge climbers

Sea of green caps

You'd think with the lack of sleep and a hangover I would've crashed into bed after walking for 5 hours straight (We walked from north Sydney to Chinatown for some shopping before going home), but we had such a great time we decided to go back for the night time walk. Plus we wanted the funky orange glowey caps they were going to give out.

View from Circular Quay

My night photos didn't turn out half as good as the ones I took on the DSLR even though I didn't even use a tripod for the DSLR. Which brings me onto my latest dilemma. I want a DSLR.

I've always wanted a SLR camera, but never got one because of a whole bunch of reasons. I had planned on getting a prosumer camera for my next holiday (A camera between a point and shoot and a DSLR). My workmate is a completely photography nut, and his equipment probably costs more than a car. I've talked to him many times and asked him to help me find a camera. He kept pushing for me to get a DSLR, but I plain right refused to spend the money.

However, after using my brother in laws camera yesterday.....I feel myself wavering. Actually, I'm beyond wavering, I'm convinced I need a DSLR. Everyone I've talked to have told me that I should get one. I love taking photos, and what better time to get a DSLR than before a trip to Italy where all the sights are absolutely breathtaking. So now I want one. I went from "No way" to "Where can I buy it?". I'm tossing up between splurging and going all out to buy a top of the range DSLR with lens and accessories for about $3000 - $5000. Or, go for a cheaper packaged kit for $1500. I was all settled on the cheaper kit, until I spoke to my brother in law and he managed to list all of my worst fears.

I KNOW I will regret not getting the top of the range camera.
I KNOW there will be functionality that the cheaper one won't offer
I KNOW that if I get the expensive one, I won't need a new camera for atleast another 5-6 years
I KNOW its cheaper to buy the top of the range one now, than to get a cheap one and then wanting a better model and end up with two cameras

I KNOW all of the above.......but I'm not sure I can justify spending that much on a camera! I've got a lot of thinking to do......and a lot of budgeting as well!!! Lets see what I end up with aye?

Outdoing the OJ Incident

I got home from work today and realised that Moishii had left a message for me on MSN. The message simply said that he's brother is in a coma, and that he is flying down to Melbourne first thing in the morning. I was wondering why I didn't hear from him today and calling him only got his voicemail. I left him a few messages and kept trying to call him through the night. I eventually got through to him and he broke the whole story to me.

His brother, who previously almost fell into a coma from overdosing on orange juice, was working in Melbourne helping dismantle a gondolier ride, when the 800kg carriage rolled ontop of him and crushing him and a workmate underneath. The people quickly rescued him and took him to hospital where he was in a coma and operated on. The good news is that he's awake and talking, but it's going to be a while before he's going to be going anywhere.

Now that I've delivered the sensible news, let me explain what REALLY happened. As you should all know now, that nothing is ever simple in Moishii's life, or his family's life. The accident happened around 1:30am Tuesday morning. The workmates who rescued his brother, called his girlfriend Tammie at 3am to let her know what was happening. Instead of doing the normal thing of calling his family and letting them know, Tammie decided to sit at home and cried for 6 hours straight. After getting that out of her system, she still didn't call Moishii's mum. Instead, she headed off to Flight centre at 10am and booked herself a flight to Melbourne for 4pm.

Finally, after 3pm, someone from his brother's work decided to call Moishii's mum to let her know that her son has been in an accident, and was in hospital. That was the whole message. Of course, his mum panics and completely goes mental and calls the girlfriend up to see if she knew. Of course she knew, and the reason she gave his mum for not calling to tell her? Because she didn't know what was going on, she didn't want to call to say she didn't know what was going on. So she decided not to call at all!! Like WTF?

So whilst Moishii's mum is completely having an attack, she manages to call her cousin in Auburn and book 3 flights down to Melbourne. 2 for her and Moishii's dad, and the third for the girlfriend. But wait, didn't the girlfriend go to flight centre to book a ticket already? Well, if you had been reading carefully, her flight was booked at 4pm, Moishii's mother didn't call her until after 3pm, AND SHE WAS STILL AT HOME! So obviously having missed that flight (Or just decided not to get on that flight cos she was busy crying), Moishii's mum booked a ticket for her, and she's supposed to meet them at the airport.

The girlfriend gets a lift from another friend, who decides to take the M4 to the airport. As they get to Parramatta, the car breaks down during peak hour traffic. So she calls up Moishii's parents to try and scab a lift off them, only they were already at the airport and decided to fly without her. So instead of doing the sane thing like flagging a car down for a ride or calling a cab, she decided to walk the M4. So she gets out of the car, grabs her suitcase, and starts walking. Not to the nearest exit....but from Parramatta to Strathfield! Who the hell walks from Parramatta to Strathfield, on the M4, whilst dragging a suitcase behind them? Wouldn't the LOGICAL thing be to get off at the nearest exit and flag a cab? It would've taken her a good 3-4hours to walk that far if not more! And even then, she still missed ALL the flights for the night and didn't get to Melbourne until this morning. Thats a whole 32+ hours from when she first found out! And the thing I want to know is, did she have to pay a toll when she walked the M4??

Meanwhile, Moishii, who gets home late after work, walks into the house to find his Grandmother having a screaming/crying fit. Apparently, everyone forgot to tell him what happened to his brother. His parents basically packed up and left him behind. His grandmother was too hysterical to tell him what was going on so he didn't find out until about 9pm last night. Luckily we didn't go to the movies like we had planned, otherwise he wouldn't have found out until about midnight! If they even bothered telling him!

So once Moishii finds out what was going on, he quickly books a flight to Melbourne for first thing this morning. He drives to the airport with his Grannie, and as they walk into the airport, the place is completely packed and the lines are longer than the Myers stocktake sale. Apparently, the whole Virgin Blue check-in system had crashed and burned and couldn't be fixed by the IT people. That meant that they had to do manual check-ins. By the time Moishii checked in, they had already missed their flight. They finally fixed the system and managed to put him on the first available flight which didn't get him to the hospital until almost midday!

So now that everyone is in Melbourne and have calmed down a bit, the girlfriend starts going a bit mental and is screaming that she's going to go to Today Tonight and tell them the whole story as to what happened and how negligent the carnival people are. She apparently spotted some camera people the today and left everyone behind in the hospital to chase after them.

So Moishii is trying to convince me to go down to Melbourne in case they do go on Today Tonight, and that I need to be there for that.

On another note, apparently Moishii's brother's life was saved by his belly. Yes, that's right. If he didn't have such a big gut, he'll be in a lot more trouble right now. His beer belly saved him.

Anyway, here's the news article on what happened just in case you think I'm making it up:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/two-hurt-in-moomba-ride-fall/2007/03/13/1173722409291.html

Sudden change of heart?

I just got an SMS from my Sister in Singapore. The message simply said "Singapore is short of skilled IT personnel, salaries are excellent". It's basically a little lure to get me to work overseas. My initial reaction was "OMG! Thats good!", but the next reaction was "Are you sure you really want to drop everything?". I've always wanted to work overseas. Not just for the freedom, but also for personal growth. I want to experience some other place than Sydney (hence my love for travel), and I think I would love the jet setters lifestyle, travelling all around the world for work and experiencing different cultures and so forth. But since my last review, I am happy with my life as it is right now. I see a path opening up before me, and I also see the stepping stones to get there. But most importantly, I KNOW I can get there! I'm earning enough to pay my mortgage and save enough to travel. (I will NEVER say that I am earning enough! I'm greedy!)

If an overseas job was offered to me right now, I'm not entirely sure I would take it. A few months ago, I probably would've accepted without blinking, but now.....now, I need to think again. Do I want to leave my family and friends, give up all my social activities and throw myself in the deep end? I'm not to sure now....

Maybe I'm in a comfort zone right now (Which is a bad thing!!), or maybe I just don't think I'm finished doing what I need to do in Sydney right now. (Which could be a good thing I guess..) Maybe if that SMS came after my Europe trip, I would give some more thought into it, but right now, its just going to sit in my mobile. I might look at it again in a few months time and decide to take action on it, or maybe I'll just keep putting it off. But I do know one thing, should there be a short term assignment (under 6 months) to work overseas, I would not say no. As for moving overseas for long term.....well, thats another kettle of fish. I'm not entirely sure why there has been a sudden change of heart on this subject, but the change isn't permanent thats for sure. Lets give it another 6 months.

A weekend of cooking and a birthday

After last week's conference, I needed this weekend to recover. So I spent the weekend at home watching TV and cooking:

Spaghetti mutated bolognese

I also got to try out a recipe I've kept hidden up my sleeve for awhile. "Braised Pork with egg and coconut juice - Thit Heo Kho". Its a recipe I saw on "Food Safari" awhile back, and instead of looking up the recipe before making it, I decided to make it from memory. Luckily, I have a really good memory! I'm not going to write the recipe since I don't exactly follow the quantities anyway.

Firstly I marinated the pork for a few hours:

Marinated pork belly

Then I defrosted some young coconut juice and removed the flesh to stew the meat in:

Young coconut juice

I added a few hard boiled eggs after simmering the meat for an hour:

Add boiled eggs to the stew

The finished product

I couldn't believe how good this turned out!! (Especially since I didn't follow the recipe) The meat melts in your mouth and the egg is flavoured with the delicious sauce that is sweet with a subtle taste of coconut juice. I will definitely be making this dish again and again! Even my family loved it! The only complaint I got was from my nephew, and that there wasn't enough eggs for him to eat!

It's also my nephew's 10th birthday on Tuesday, but since I've got volleyball on Monday nights, I wouldn't be able to get home in time to bake him a cake for Tuesday. So instead, I offered to bake him a cake for tonight. And since I was baking a cake, we decided to have dinner and celebrate his birthday as well.

Stir fried mixed vegetables with fish cake and pork tongue

This sounds a bit gross, but if no one told you what was in it, you would be asking what is that beautiful meat in the stir fry? Its so tender and....porky...My mum cooked it awhile back, and I've been requesting that she makes it again and again! Its too nice! Oh, and the fish cake was hand made by my sister. Not bad for her first attempt.

Black pepper lamb and chicken casserole

This is one of our family favourites. Its probably more Asian than its casserole considering its seasoned with soya sauce and oyster sauce, but its sooo good! My mum loads the dish up with heaps of coarsely ground black pepper giving the dish a nice heat to the tongue. Usually I always have this dish with a big bowl of instant noodles (No sauce or seasoning) to soak up the sauce.

Pipi in XO sauce on a bed of rice noodles

Pork trotters in vinegar

And of course, there was the cake. Since I didn't decide to make the cake until late last night, I was a bit low on ingredients, but found just enough stuff to whip up two cakes:

My little cousin trying to get to the cake!

Raspberry swirl cake with a white chocolate glaze

Mocha Mud cake with a white chocolate glaze

Last minute decorations

Happy birthday Brandon!

MmmMMm Moist mocha mud cake

The raspberry swirl

Oh, and Gus, hope you're legs feeling better! I would bring you some cake for tomorrow night's game, but since you're MIA, looks like more for me!

Gus's bruised, hairy ankle