John's 38th Birthday!

This morning, Ross and I headed into the city to visit a Chinese medicine practitioner, David McCleoud. He prescribed me some herbal medicine that I could take in tablet form and I also had half an hour of acupuncture. The acupunture was incredibly relaxing even though I had a needle in my left ear, the top of my head, both hands, both feet and my tummy.

While I was having my acupuncture session, Ross chatted with David who prescribed some things for him too. We walked out an hour later with a big bag of medicines.

Back at John's place, we had some breakfast and about 12, we drove into Southbank to meet up with Ann and Dad at the Ship Inn for lunch. It was a beautiful day so we sat outside enjoying watching the people walk past whilst sipping our drinks. We had lunch and chatted for a while before Dad and Ann headed off to catch the train home again.

Shortly after, Dee arrived. She had just flown in from Melbourne and was spending the night in Brisbane before heading off to Wellington for Christmas Day. Unfortunately, all this travel was for work :-(.

We walked to the Pump Hotel and found a spot on the balcony upstairs to continue having a drink or two. After finding out that they didn't serve food, we moved on and ended up driving to another spot on the other side of the river. We found a great spot at one of the restaurants/ bars with open air seating. The place was packed with after work drinkers celebrating their last day or two of work.

We sat there and drank two bottles of wine between us and had some snacks while watching the sunset and the lights come on on the Story Bridge. It was really nice.

About 8, we were all pretty shattered so we dropped Dee back to her hotel and headed home. We sat up for a bit before all of us head to bed full of too much alcohol and crap food.

My 34th Birthday!

This morning I woke up and Ross gave me my birthday card. Inside the card, Ross wrote that I had 10 massages, 10 facials and a special treatment at Kanebo spa. Fun! We got up and headed down to the gym for a good workout for about an hour. I had some yoghurt and then showered to get ready for the champagne brunch.

Unfortunately, both Tara and JB were feeling really lousy with a stomach bug so they wouldn't be coming to the brunch. Just before 12, we opened a bottle of sparkling wine just in time for Julia to arrive. Sonja and Brian came over next and we finished the champagne before heading to the Westin for brunch. Brian drove us over and then he left to pick up Ian from his trip to Nepal.

So Julia, Sonja, Ross and I enjoyed our brunch, complete with balloon hats! The food was great and the free flowing champagne wasn't bad either. Sonja however may not think so as she disappeared for a while and when she came back we had to call Brian to come and pick her up.

Julia, Ross and I continued on. We merged with another group at the table next to us who were all teachers at Garden School where Julia's son Lewis goes. We were the last ones to leave the brunch and then we headed next door to Starhill Gallery where we went downstairs to the latern bar.

We had a couple of cocktails and Julia's husband Phil came in and met us straight off the plane from the UK. By about 7, Ross and I were about done. We walked back through the Pavillion and stopped at the German restaurant for some food before walking home.

Back at home, we couldn't get in the door. Eddie had locked it during the day and poor Tara had been trying to unlock it for half an hour to come and join us! We finally managed to unlock it :-)

We chatted to JB and Tara for quite a while before finally falling into bed just before 10. What a great birthday! Great times with great friends!

I did pretty well for presents for my birthday. Ross bought me a new digital camera, the spa package, my gorgeous dress that I wore today and a bracelet from Kenneth Cole. Julia bought me a great beach bag similar to the one she has that I loved and Sonja bought me a bracelet and two charms from Thomas Sabo. Tara and JB gave me a cute little bag made out of recycled plastic bags, a Anna Sui coin purse, and a necklace and earring set made out of recycled magazines.

Dad gets his new car and Patrick turns 1!

This morning I didn't do too much and about 10.30, Dad and I headed over to Sefton Plaza to run a few errands. They had rung up to say that Dad's car was ready so we went to get a bank cheque from CPS for the remainder of the amount owing. We also dropped off the last bit of paperwork for Dad's pension payments and he should receive his first payment on Monday! Pretty quick!

I ducked into to Target to find a present for Patrick who was turning 1. We bought him a cloth book and some bath toys. From Sefton Plaza, we drove over to Stillwell Hyundai to see Ron about Dad's car. It was almost ready, they just had to do the window tinting and a final inspection before Dad could pick it up. So we finalized all the paperwork and Ron said that it will be ready to pick up at 5.

After that, I dropped Dad home and headed over to Kate's place again to pick her up to go see a movie. We went to see "Julie and Julia" at the Chelsea Cinemas. I had forgotten how nice those cinemas are. There was talk that they were going to be shut down and there is an action group that is helping raise funds to keep it alive.

As for the movie, Meryl Streep was fantastic. She played the quirky Julia Childs character so well. The actual plot of the movie was a bit boring but it was still a nice movie to go and see. Definitely a chick flick. Afterwards, I dropped Kate home, picked up Dad and we went to Stillwell again to pick up his car.

It was pretty exciting driving a brand new car off the lot! I think it may take Dad a while to get used to the fact that he has a new car and also get used to driving a manual again. From the ca yard, we drove straight over to David and Donna's for dinner to celebrate Patrick's first birthday. It was the first time that I have seen David this trip and he was doing really well. Patrick was up and about and wasn't quite sure what to make of his birthday. Donna's parents, Andrea and Gary also dropped over to see the birthday boy.

In a couple of weeks, Timothy and Annabelle turn 10 - amazing! I left a couple of cards with Donna for them too. It was so nice to catch up with them all again - what great friends! It's amazing to think I have known David and Donna for over 20 years!

I drove the new Getz home and Dad and I both headed straight to bed. I spoke with Ross for a while before finally getting to sleep.

Happy Birthday Ross!

Although Ross' birthday celebrations really started last night at midnight, his birthday "day" started by me waking him up at 6am. OK, this may not sound like much of a birthday so far but I planned to take Ross on an early morning hike so we could watch the sunrise from the top of a ridge overlooking the city. Champagne breakfast included in the deal.

However, due to the festivities of the night before, we were both a bit rough and struggled to function too quickly. I packed up the backpack with all the essentials (including last minute additions of Berocca and Nurofen) and then we headed out in the car.

I had a vague idea of where we were heading so set the GPS to where I thought we should be. It was still dark and we ended up past Zoo Negara (the National Zoo) winding our way up an ever narrowing road towards the ridge. We passed through a tiny kampung (village) which was pretty cool in the pre-dawn mist.

After deciding this wasn't the place we were supposed to be, I reset the GPS to another local. This time I had it right and we ended up at the Klang Gates Dam in Taman Melawati where the trek up to Bukit Tabur begins.

Because we took a slight detour before getting there, it was now well past sunrise but still early (and cool) enough. We followed a few other people up the near vertical path to the top of the ridge. It was magnificent! The ridge itself is made out of quartz crystal and the trail gives you views of the Klang Gates Dam and also a great view of the city. As you can see from the photo, we took some time up the top to soak in the view. I would like to say it was also serene but a very "chirpy" university group were also climbing the ridge this morning.

Neither of us felt like breakfast (let alone champagne!) so we sucked down the water and recovered from our hangovers from the night before. After the climb down, we headed home and felt pretty good about ourselves that we managed to do all this before 9am considering our delicate condition.

That being said, we hit the shower and then fell back into bed. I gave Ross his present (Shure Sound Isolating headphones and a bottle of 2002 Petaluma Shiraz) and the present that Ann gave him before we soundly fell asleep. I didn't surface again until 1pm!

I had organized a masseuse to come to the house for an hour and a half massage for Ross at 2pm so by the time he came out of that he looked pretty relaxed! We spent the afternoon relaxing on the couch before heading off to dinner at the revolving restaurant at Menara KL (KL Tower).

We picked Jason up at his hotel and headed out there. It was quite the experience! Beautiful views but it was completely full of tourists (no surprise) and families with toddlers. The tourists were pushing past everyone's tables to get the best views for their photos and the toddlers were running around and shrieking - not exactly the quiet dinner I had planned! The food was ok but nothing to rave home about. So basically I would say it is a good place to go for the view of KL at night but not really the place for a quiet or romantic dinner.

Jason, Ross and I headed to the bar downstairs in Starhill Gallery for a cocktail before walking home. I think Ross had a pretty good birthday all up :-)