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PeaNutButtA_n_JellY
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Name: Davina
Birthday: 8/29/1980
Gender: Female
Interests: None exciting enough to mention.
Occupation: Education/training
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message me
Member Since:
8/5/2003
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| Marty came down to Brisbane from up North over the weekend and stayed overnight at our place. We went for yum cha on sunday morning and the funniest thing happened. Dodgy tightass asian customer service at its best :)
Ok, so, Marty ordered these steam dumplings which the waiter told us would take 20mins cook (benefit of the doubt - maybe they had to make them on the spot?). When it arrived, tony, marty and i took one each and to be honest.. it was disgusting. Anyway, after we had all eaten one, we saw that there was a hair on one of the other 5 remaining dumplings. So Marty called the waiter and showed it to him. Ok, this is where the fun begins:
Marty: Excuse me.. there is a hair on the dumpling (shows it to the waiter)
Waiter: *takes a long hard stare at it* Ok... but there is no hair on the others. So you can still eat the others?
Marty: *stares at waiter* What do you mean?
Waiter: Maybe I can give you discount for the dumpling.
Marty: You mean like a 50% discount?
Waiter: Noooo.. cannot give you 50% discount coz you can still eat the other dumplings (Meaning: You pay for 7/8ths of the dumplings and I won't charge you for the one with the hair.)
Marty: How do we know all the other dumplings don't have hair on them?
Waiter: Because if there was hair you would tell us! (HUHHHH??? Logic??!!)
Marty: Well what if your chef did this *runs hand through hair*? How are we supposed to know all the other dumplings are clean?
Waiter: So you don't want the dumplings
Marty: Yes, if thats alright.
OMG... this could only happen with tightass asians. Look, it would have been less funny and possibly more 'normal' if he had refused to cancel the order or if he had refused to replace it. But to offer a 1/8th discount for the dumplings??!! Who the hell does that? And to the tell us that all the other dumplings must be clean if not we would have said something about them.??
As marty said, this guy should never work in the lay-by or refunds department of k-mart or target. It'll be like this... a customer will bring in a fan with a broken part, and he'll say "ok.. i'll give you 0.1% discount coz 99% of the fan is still intact". And if you say to him "how am i supposed to know if the rest of it works?", he'll say "well, if it didn't work you'd tell me right?"
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| TGIFThank goodness it's Friday! My first week back at work was drainnninggg... argghhh.. I officially start work at 7.50am... wake up at 6.30am, leave the house by 7am, catch a train at 7.10am, get to work by 7.40am, then start teaching my class at 8.20am. For someone who has been sleeping at 1am and waking up at 11am for the past few months... this is hell!! Oh well.. slowly getting back into the swing of things.
Everyone in the staff room at my new school is really nice and friendly.. but it's really sad coz it makes me miss my work friends in Sydney heaps. Everything in this new school feels so familiar, but yet so different (if you know what I mean). I'd be doing my work, and I'd hear a voice, and I'd think oh that Raymond! But then when I turn around it'd be someone else. Or i'd walk past someone and from the corner of my eye I'd think I see Ian... but then I'd take a second look and realise it's only someone who looks like him. So sad. I don't like changes and I just wish I was back in Sydney, surrounded by people I get along so well with, and who make my working week so enjoyable and pleasant... people who will listen to me whinge about everything and anything. I'm sure I'll eventually get to know the people I work with a lot better. But for now, they make me miss my sydney friends even more.
Anyway, my first day back at work saw me relief teaching an FCE (First Certificate in English) class. I was horrified that morning when they told me I had to teach that class. I've never taught it before and only had 1 hr to prepare... had no idea what I had to do... plus I was starting at a new school.. arghhh... But it ended up ok... treated it as my usual General English class and did a bit of grammar and stuff. On tuesday I got my own class - Pre-Intermediate level. I've got 7 Koreans and 2 Japanese in the class. Not a very good mix of students. I usually get students from at least 4 different countries (mainly korean, jap, south american, european, or thai).. and it makes the class dynamics so much better. Anyway, the class I have is still fantastic despite the lack of mix.. lovely, motivated students... couldn't ask for a better class to start with after a whole year off work :) It was an easy transition back into work life for me... but still depressing :P
Oh well... I'm just glad it's the weekend. Tony and I are going to some open houses tomorrow.. back to house hunting for us. Then it's poker night tomorrow night! Tony bought some poker chips off ebay.. and a poker/blackjack table... and Dennis bought a card shuffler...So hardcore! heheheh :P And i'm making tiramisu to take to the game. I've got a wonderful tiramisu recipe from an australian/italian girl i used to work with. I think it's traditional italian.. could possibly be a family recipe. It's the best tiramisu I've ever tasted! hehehe I'll post it on here when I have the time.
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| OMG... only 2 more days to go before I have to start work again :( NOOOOOO :( You'd think that after a whole year off work, I'd actually look forward to doing something productive again.. but noooo I'm so depressed just thinking about waking up at 7am everyday :( Yesterday afternoon I pulled out all the boxes with my teaching materials in them... in an weak attempt to sort them out and put them on the bookshelf... but after taking a peek inside, i pulled out my nice blue pencil case and shut the box again. I just can't deal with them right now.
Tony and I went down to Suncorp in the city today to get a pre-approval for a home loan. We're lucky that Dennis works there so he set us up and organised most of the stuff with the lender for us. Did you know that if you took a loan out over a 25 yr period, at the end of it you'd have paid in interest an amount nearly equivalent to that of the initial loan? So say you went to the bank to borrow $500000... by the end of 25 years you'd have paid nearly $1 mill for the house! You'd hope that the value of your property would've increased by that much! It's just depressing to think how much the banks are making from your loan. So Tony and I have decided that we're gonna pay off our loan ASAP... our target is within 6 yrs. We're just gonna be poor and dump all our money in there. After the bank we went down to the Brisbane City Council to find out what plans they have for an urban renewal in the Woollongabba/East Brisbane area. Got the information we wanted, then drove around to look at some potential properties in that area. Yup... we're looking to buy around that area... only 2km from the city and still affordable. Hopefully after the urban renewal happens prices there will go up. Fingers crossed. We've been looking for houses around there for a coupla months now but so far nothing good's come up. We're pretty set on what we want in terms of land size(>400sqm), location (no main road, and within a certain km radius) and other features (like we don't want a pool for sure.. and preferably no garden). Its just a matter of finding that perfect property now.
Anyway, enough of boring mortgage/property hunting stuff. Today I made an attempt at baking a Cotton Soft Japanese Cheesecake. It was a flop (not unexpected). So far all the other cakes that I have baked have all been flops. Some people can't cook, some can't bake and some can't sew. I can't do all three. And it's not as if I don't try :P Oh and I'm bad in the garden too (hence want house with no garden). I kill plants... especially when I'm trying not to.
I keep meaning to take and post some photos on this blog. But since I'm using my work laptop atm I don't really want to save any photos on this comp. I can do it from Tony's comp... which wouldn't be too difficult considering it's only a few steps from where I'm sitting right now.. but any effort is too much effort for me :P Thats how lazy I am. I will post some pics soon tho... We spend most of our weekends with friends... mainly at each other's houses having dinner and playing Wii or poker (Tony's just bought a set of hardcore poker chips from ebay). Should take some photos of our weekly gatherings and post them. But like I said, any effort is too much effort for Davina ;)
Have a nice weekend everyone while I try make the most of my last 2 days of freedom :)
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| Yayy!! Finally got the photographer booked. Brought the price down from $11,250 to $9,400.. very happy with that! A lot of people think we're crazy spending this much on photos... but we have to explain to them that we're getting a fair bit in the package for the price. I hear "Oh my friend who just got married only paid $3000 for her photos, your photographer's waayyy too expensive blah blah blah" a lot... well yeah I'm sure your friend's photos were a bargain but did she also get two 30"x40" wall hangings, two parent albums, an engagement session and heaps of other stuff on top of her package? Did you say NO? Well then please don't compare her basic no frills package with mine thats got the works. It just doesn't make sense hey :P Plus, this photographer is awesome and we knew he was the one we wanted right from the start.
Anyway, just to summarise it for my benefit.. we've booked:
1. Dinner reception venue (approx. $14000)
2. Church & priest ($800)
3. Photographer ($9400)
4. Videographer ($2800)
That leaves us with $13000 for everything else. Hmmm.. possibly doable.
On the work front... there's been a turn of events in the last week. I'm not going to go into too much detail about it coz there's a fair bit of confidential information involved. However, a quick run down... while in Sydney I was offered a job to help set up a school in Brisbane.. which is pretty much what I've been doing for the past 2 1/2 mths. But it's taking a while for the school to be set up so I decided and talked to head office last week about looking for another job in the interim. After getting the green light, I applied for an English teaching position last Wednesday... got a call back about 1 hr after submitting my application... had an interview on Friday (yes, they gave me a grammar test to do which went alright considering it's been 12 mths since I taught my last class) and by Friday afternoon I got myself a full-time job! Everything's happened so quickly! I start teaching my first class next monday... so I've got myself a week to get use to the fact that I'll be back in the classroom again after a whole year off! Not looking forward to that at the moment.
Oh well... its all fun and games. Now that we've got all the major stuff for our wedding booked, I probably won't have much to update till about mid yr.. that's when I plan to start looking for my gown. Oh almost forgot, we still have to decide on our 3 bridesmaids and 3 groomsmen. So far I've got my sis and my best friend Gwen as my bridesmaids and Tony's got his bro and Ez (do you still read this blog Ez?) as his groomsmen.. so that leaves just 1 spot each to fill. It's a tough call. Oh well.. will keep everyone updated on that!
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| Ok.. so I've been a bit lazy updating this blog. Today I made an attempt to tidy up the house a bit. Gathered all the floor mats and chucked them in the washing machine... then pulled out the vacuum cleaner and moved it around a bit I was contemplating vacuuming the whole house.. but nah.. too much effort. So I ended up vacuuming 3 rooms (Tony, Joyce and mine) and a bit of the toilet (yuck) and then i looked at the rest of the top floor and thought.. ok davina, it's not that hard to just finish off this little bit more.. but then i talked myself out of it (that looks clean enough.. it won't make a difference whether it gets vacuumed or not.. no one's gonna notice anyway.. blah blah blah).. and eventually put the vacuum cleaner away. Then I got one of these magic tissue things and started dusting tables and drawers etc... but i cheated heaps coz i didn't dust under books and stuff (which took up the majority of the surface area of the tables)... pretty much just wiped around everything. Oohhh I'm so lazy. I just hate doing housework. Can think of a million other things i'd rather do. But then again, this is a BIG house (6 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 1 rumpus room, 1 lounge room, 1 formal dining, 1 casual dining... you get the point).. I get put off just thinking about how big it is. However, with a big house, you can get away with it if only a small section of the house (i.e. my room and tony's) is messy...coz in the overall scheme of things, it's only like 1/6 of the whole house so you hardly notice it. Thats what I hope anyways.
Ok, on to our wedding preparations. We're trying to negotiate the price with our photographer at the moment. Our total package will come up to $11,250.. but he's offered to take $1000 off.. which brings it down to $10,250. We're hoping to get it below $10,000. Too much to ask for? hehehe Oh well.. can only try hey? We've also booked our videographer... they actually came over to our place to show us their work at 8pm monday nite (pretty impressive huh).. and they were really nice people. Charging us top dollar.. but they're pretty good. So, thats another $2,800 gone from our wedding budget. We've got a budget of about $40K... and so far, we're spending approx $14K for dinner reception, $800 for church and priest, $10K for photos, $2.8K for video... doesn't leave us much for the rest. It's crazy how much weddings cost! Tony and I are paying for the wedding ourselves... his parents are paying for the dinner reception in Taiwan and mine for the one in Singapore. Oh, have I mentioned before that we're having dinner receptions in both Taiwan and Singapore? They'll mainly be for rellies and parent's friends since we don't really have any friends there. Should be fun though.. 3 weeks of wedding activities :)
Anyway, enough rambling... oh I've started a video diary/blog to keep a record of our wedding plans. It's easier than typing stuff. That's gonna remain private for the time being. Hopefully by the end of it we can put it all on disk and be able to look back on it and laugh in the future :)
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