My First Weekend

Friday night, I made dinner for 4 (me, cousin michelle, andrew, and natasha)...sort of a test run for tuesday night's dinner with tita terry and family. I made salmon, baked veggies, and mash potatoes. They were impressed...including presentation-wise! naks naman! galing no? After dinner, we all stayed up late preparing the food for the housewarming party on Sat. I made some potato salad and my secret recipe (cream cheese jello....see, i know how to cook and make some desserts, too!). kala niyo, di ko alam. I learned how to make buko pandan dessert...c/o Mitch.

Saturday, people started to come in around 5pm...starting with Father Ants (anthony) to bless our house. Lots of people came...michelle and natasha's friends and coworkers. I met new people. A couple of them were accountants (karla and bernadette) and were competing to sell their companies for me to work for. So to be fair, I'm passing my resume to both. I'm so lucky I got here at the right time. Accountants, besides nurses, are in demand right now. So any of you accountants who need a job (but i'm sure we don't lack that in the US), move here and keep me company. Let's see how many people i can remember from the party: me, michelle, andrew, natasha, father ants, bernadette, gaby, jasmin, kim, stephen, hans, karla, another michelle, ingrid, mikaela, sam, lisa, ebony, brenda, michael, silvi, stephanie, another natasha, ana...i think that's abt it (maybe missed 1 or 2 people). I did pretty good with the names! we served so much food but were almost gone by the end of the night. The party was a success but too much work! That night, I learned a few things about Australia: (1) most people only have 5 channels on TV. In fact, one morning, I turned on the tv and i flipped to only 5 channels. When my cousin arrived from work, i asked her if there's something wrong with the TV...hahahha...so i learned that pretty much you only get 5 channels here...sucks! unless you get cable. but i made sure they had desperate housewives here coz i've missed a couple of episodes of season 2...fortunately, australia is still in season 1...so i can predict the future and let them know what's gonna happen. (2) CA - chartered accts are equivalent to our CPAs in the US. They do have CPAs here, too, but they are lower than CAs. That's good to know coz when i tell them i'm a CPA, they might think its the lower level of acct. (3) they have boba/tapioca drinks here, too....somewhere in chinatown. so i'm gonna have to look for that and get me some! so that's just some of the things i learned that night...in addition to crossing the street by looking to your right first and making sure i get on the right bus on the other side of the road otherwise, i go home the opposite way (because they drive on the other side of the road). i also measured how much my ideal weight limit is in kilos as opposed to pounds (i still don't get as to why the US is still in the english system while everywhere else is in the metric system). miles to kilometers, gallons to liters, US dollars to Australian dollars....so much to learn but a great experience indeed!

sunday, we attended a latin mass. the mass on sunday was special to celebrate the feast of the maternity of the blessed virgin mary declaring that mary was truly the mother of God. Also special was because the oldest musical institution of Australia founded in 1818, the St Mary's Cathedral Choir, performed during the mass. The mass was medieval themed, nothing to do with the feast. After the mass over at the church lawns, they had a children's contest (medieval drawings, medieval costumes, etc). lots of people were dressed up in medieval times. This reminds me of halloween that's coming up soon. I guess they don't really celebrate halloween here...it is slowly coming to australia but its not the culture. so i'll miss the times i went to castro in SF during halloween or the halloween parties.

...MY FIRST WEEKEND IN AUSTRALIA. but don't expect that i'll have more stories nor will i have long ones going forward. its pretty much gonna settle down and get normal around here in a couple of weeks.