Here's My Story

I sounded out my sisters on wanting to come out to parents . They suggested instead to help me test the water. They had a couple of suggestions and we finally settled on my youngest sister gossiping about one of my gay friends. FYI, earlier this year, I already had permission from this friend to tell my parents about him being gay, as a conversation opener. Honestly, I forgot about this but luckily my sisters didn't (thanks!). Initially, it didn't go that well. My youngest sister reported that my dad commented that it was unnatural and that a guy shouldn't be without another guy. My mum was silent. My sister did respond appropriately but that was that. Oh well, at least we tried this, instead of me coming out right away. The next day, I called my parents to wish them happy anniversary and to my surprise, my dad brought up the topic of my friend being gay. Amazingly, he was positive about it: he accepted that being gay is in-born, and all that matters was that the person...

Each time I visit my sister in Canberra, she would ask me for a wish list of food that I would like to have. On the recent trip, I asked and had lamington (from nearby bakery), lamb kebab with garlic mayo sauce from Allibaba and udon from Ka Sushi Ramen. One day, while she and her husband were discussing dinner options for their family, she reminded me of Mr Shabu Shabu where previously I had shabu shabu and a couple of salmon sushi which I thought was good. That jolted my memory (see, sis, your memory's not bad what :) ) and I readily agreed with that dining option. This time, I went for sushi only :) Yes, they were delicious although the quality control could be tighter as the sushi pieces were of different size. AUD3.50 gets you 2 pieces of salmon sushi and if I recall correctly, the 2 pieces of tuna sushi cost AUD4.00. My sister had a plate of mixed sushi while her husband had shabu shabu, both of which they liked. For the first time, the kids looked and chose fo...

If I have been diligently blogging my illness, then it would seem that it was more than a year ago since I had this sequence of symptoms. I started having sorethroat 4 days ago. It was as though the throat was badly scalded or something (maybe by acid reflux?). On a hunch, I went to see a doctor, who prescribed me anti-histamine, anti-inflammation and a  short course of antibiotic. Unfortunately the illness proceeded on the same path as a year ago: 1. Sorethroat 2. Sorethroat worsened, sneezing 3. Bad sorethroat, runny nose 4. Sorethroat less painful, runny nose, phlegm accumulation while lying down 5. Sorethroat, white thick mucus causing sinus pressure, phlegm accumulation, post-nasal drip 6. Sorethroat, yellow thick mucus causing sinus pressure, phlegm accumulation, post-nasal drip, cough, fever (new!) Didn't have proper sleep past few nights due to phelgm and backdrip. Had to try to rest as much while sitting up :( Once again, I suspect the anti-inflammation was c...

The urge to come out to my parents is getting stronger each time I think about it once in a while. My main reservation is the potential of disturbing the "peace". After decades of ups and downs, we have come to a stable state, so to speak. Internal strife is minimal and next year we'll be entering a new phase of "financial support arrangement". It is, however, getting tedious to maintain this charade. I so want to introduce Ban to them as my partner and it would be much easier to speak with them from then on about us (rather than being "housemates") and our activities e.g. going on holidays together as we did recently. I am also thinking about the future where Ban and I may move to another state or even another country. I'm quite sure my mum would be ok but I'm uncertain about my dad. My dad was of the traditional China-man type but he has come a long way to change his ways. I'm just afraid this is just one too many "modern" p...

We were supposed to check out at 10.30am on our third day but upon enquiry, the holiday house owner allowed us to check out late because she didn't have consecutive bookings. Hooray! What made it even sweeter was the weather finally reverted to its expected sunny-beach-friendly temperament :) So we drove to Surf Beach and found this scene: Oh yes, it looked like a beautiful day for beach goers. I tried the water but it was shockingly cold for me lol. The constant wind was not helping either, with sand and water droplets clouding my glasses @@. It was relaxing though, doing nothing but just watching...except I did something later. It has to do with these: I chased the seagulls for a while to protect our food and picnic mat hehehe. It was silly but quite fun :) We had some seafood from the nearby fish & chips shop for lunch. It was delicious and reasonably priced too. Although my sister's family enjoyed this beach visit, I wouldn't choose to ...

My medic hover, Lovebeam Mercy, is currently in its 3rd version but I'm still not happy about its instability. Too many times it kept spinning around upside down and up when bumped by other bots. So I checked out the CRF for some medic hovers, based on combat renting and/or rentals/sales. I was contemplating between 3 of them and decided to try Kaevik's Kae Bone: It isn't shielded all around like my Lovebeam Mercy but it certainly looks tough with (what appears to be) tri-forced block spam. It also have 8 guns and their placement is such that at least 2 guns are on the same planes. This make them quite vulnerable to plasma or rail damage given how closely they are placed to one another. I hope that there are some tri-forcing within its body that increase the pathways between the guns. What I am particularly pleased with this bot is that there's very little gun clipping and it's easy to avoid it. All guns can also heal any bots flying/hovering abo...

This is the sunroom at the holiday house. It was also the best place to get good internet connection on your phone :P It was where we played Boggles. I found a set at the rack and taught the kids to play it. Their parents soon joined us. The weather was once again not the beach-friendly type. Nevertheless, we checked out the nearest beach (for future refence), Corrigans Beach, which was a mere 5-min walk away. My sister and her hubby decided that it wasn't suitable for the kids to play at. The tide was fierce. Gloomy weather. We then made our long walk to the town area. We passed by some tennis courts, belonging to the local tennis club. University of Wollongong's Batemans Bay campus, which basically consisted of 2 buildings @@. A skatepark was just a short distant away. There were some skaters and cyclists around. Walking past the marina. Seagulls! We lunched at The Starfish Deli after my sister found some good r...

I have never played the hardcopy version of this boardgame. I was interested in it after watching Aavak played with 3 other youtubers. The aim of the game is to be the first person to reach the last "tile" and use the Crown of Command to cast the Command spell. To get there, you absolutely need 2 things: sufficient strength or craft to open Portal of Power, and a talisman to pass through the Valley of Fire. It took me at least 115 rounds (each round = 1 turn per player) to finish the game. So, assuming it took a mere 5 minutes to finish a round, that translates to nearly 10 hours of play! The youtubers took about 2.5 hours. Now, 2.5 hours for a boardgame is nothing unusual but the amount of grinding and luck involved made this game tedious. Let's say you want to get to the village to see the mystic to improve your craft stat and it's 4 tiles away. You would first need to roll a die and you must get exactly 4 to move there. You can spend many rounds before fi...

I accepted my sister's invitation to join her family on a weekend trip (Friday evening to Sunday afternoon) to Batemans Bay in South Coast, New South Wales. It has the nearest beaches to Canberra and yes, their main intention was to play and relax on the beach. I can't even remember the last time I've been to a beach. It could have been nearly 2 decades ago and probably one of the beaches in Sydney lol. Since I had never been the Batemans Bay before, I decided to try something new and accepted her invitation. We arrived at the holiday house on Friday past 6pm and quickly placed our stuff...and go to toilet of course :) I had time to take some pictures...of pictures and some other parts of the house. Since we were in a hurry, I intended to take more pictures before we left on Sunday (that's for another post). The house was quite small. It had 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, a small kitchen, a laundry room, a small space for the dining table and chairs, a living room t...

A few photos taken at Belconnen Mall: Yes, not only was the Christmas decoration up, Santa was there too. Of course there were children around. I would say this photoshoot session was a successful one. There was, however, one poor toddler who was crying while his/her parents tried to distract him during the photoshoot. Poor thing :) Not sure whether I noticed this roof structure before. I like it as it allows natural sunlight to stream in. Ban spotted this poster of "Attack on Titan" anime. Coincidentally, we were watching this anime together with my sister on most afternoons. Ban was surprised that I like it, given its rather dark gory nature. I thought it was just right.

Whenever we are apart, Ban's daily routine goes a little haywire. He'll sleep late. Feel restless. Foggy. A simple direct explanation is that when I'm around, he usually goes to bed when I do and I usually don't sleep late (still trying to improve!). I also have my meals at regular times. But we both know he misses me, and I miss him too :) Just that I have not noticed similar symptoms on my part until recently: my sister commented that ever since Ban left OZ and went back to KL, I was less chirpy and missing a spring in my step. Truth to be told, I was feeling a little under the weather but I do not discount the causation. How can I not miss someone who makes me laugh and feel loved every single day? Someone who smiles the moment he sees me in the morning. I love you, honey bunny. I'll be back in a few weeks time!