Finally back home for the summer holidays. It's been exactly a week since I'm back, and I can't deny that I really really DO NOT like the heat and humidity back home. So not use to it anymore. Always feeling sticky and sweaty, hot and uncomfortable. Can't even wear my jeans anymore. But other than the obvious heat, I definitely love love LOVE being able to indulge in all the yummy goodness home has to offer! Had my favourite Pan Mee once I arrived back. Also had Chicken Rice, Beef Noodles, Tai Chao, Fu Kin Chao, Curry Noodles, not to mention CRABS! And these are not even a quater of my food list! So many more to eat, so many more to cross out. I love being back but I also miss the weather back in Melb. I guess that's how it goes...

It's almost Christmas time, been seeing all the pretty Christmas decorations in the malls and of course Christmas Sales! Can't wait for christmas day and open all my presents! (If I get any)...

That's all for now. Been enjoying my summer holidays a lot, still a long way to go and I'm already wishing for it to be longer...

Hope you guys have a Merry Merry Christmas and a Happy Happy New Year!!!

Last Friday, after staying up all night the night before, rushing for a group assignment (and when I mean all night, I really meant ALL night), I was still able to scream it up at night at MONSU/OSS's Halloween Party. Tickets were only $10! and it comes with 2 free drinks. Who would ever turn it down?!

Trick or Treat! 

The boys did a really good job decorating the place.

Mr.Navigator as Gmail/Blackmail & Me as Red Riding Hood.

The rest of the bunch!

Drunken Zombie. 

I totally love his effort. He looks freaking scary with flash on!

Now here's a funny combination.

Instead of 'You've got mail', its 'You've got Corporate Mail'.

It was a totally fun night although I was super duper tired! Great Job Guys! All your hardwork paid off.

Thanks for a great party!

I use to dislike macarons because they were too sweet for my liking. But after having a bite of Adriano Zumbo's macarons during winter break, one bite was all it took to change my taste buds. Now whenever I'm free, and when I feel a little rich, I'll venture to different dessert places around Melbourne to try their macarons. I'm currently on a mission to try to find the best Macarons in Melbourne! 

So coming back to the topic, last Saturday, Mr.Navigator and I travelled to South Yarra to tryout this little contemporary cafe called LuxBite. Found out through Urbanspoon that they're famous for their macarons. soooo... here we go 

This cafe's owned by a Malaysian. Malaysia Boleh! haha

These are the varieties of macarons offerred there. 

One flavour that makes it so Malaysian is the 'Kaya Toast' flavour. When I bit into it, it was like I'm literally having kaya toast in a kopitiam back home - kaya with a small block of butter in the middle. It was pretty awesome. I'm impressed!

Other than the Kaya Toast, the Mandarin n Saffron, Peanut Butter n Jelly and Creme Brulee flavours were pretty good too.

They also offered simple breakfast and lunch menus as well as some assorted cakes and desserts like in the picture below.

I tried their Caramel Cravings - Sweet caramel lovingly placed between chocolate and a coconut base, topped with a salted caramel macaron. 

It wasn't fantastic. It was just ok. I didn't try any of their breakfast and lunch menu but what I saw served at other tables sure looks pretty yummy.

Although that had some pretty interesting flavours of macarons, after trying, I wouldn't say they're one of the best. For me, I didn't like the fact that their macaron shells were too moist and too thin. But that's just for me. They still made it on the Top 20 Best Macarons in Melbourne. So I guess you got to try it to judge it.

Last Thursday, I attended Mr.Navigator, AmandaPandaChoe, MetalMartin, and PerfectSmileMichie's graduation at the Monash Campus in Clayton. Everyone was there at around 1pm. Got their gowns, lunch and it was picture time all day long!

Before the ceremony,

Mr.Navigator & MetalMartin

With Mr.Navigator

With his parents.

It was crazy windy that day. It was literally insane! Everyone came in nicely combed hair, went back like Medusa! Lol.. 

After bumming for hours, the ceremony finally started at around 4pm. Everyone nicely seated in the hall, then came the boring speeches as usual. The speakers should really work with their speech tones! The monotones were killing both boring and interesting speeches.

The Chancellor. 

1st up among my friends - Colour blocking AmandaPandaChoe!

Then, Mr.Navigator

MetalMartin

And lastly, PerfectSmileMichie

Photo taking sessions continued after the ceremony ended.

MetalMartin & Mr.Navigator

With MetalMartin

MetalMartin, YongyBear & Mr.Navigator

With Mr.Navigator!

The 3 who started together, ended together.

FunnyFaceJulian popped by after the ceremony.

Now, what's a graduation without throwing off your grad-caps? 

CAPS OFF TO THE GRADUATES!!

CONGRATULATIONS GUYS! SO PROUD :)

During my winter break, I spent a week in Sydney with Mr.Navigator visiting one of my close friend, HelloKittySandra and RockstarGabriel, who happen to be in Sydney too. Since the day we arrived, it rained NON-STOP for 3 WHOLE days! Talk about bad timing. But we didn't let the rain stop us from venturing around and having fun. 

Mr.Navigator and I had a list of places we wanted to visit while we were there, some are the obvious - Sydney Opera House, Sydney Fish Market. But the place that I'm most excited about is non other than Adriano Zumbo's patisserie!!

If you have been following Masterchef Australia, you'd know how amazing Adriano's desserts are. From his famous 8 layer vanilla cake - V8 cake to his Macarons Tower. While we were looking for the patisserie, I couldn't help but skipped and jumped in excitement. When we found the place, my heart starts pumping, and I rushed into the stall like a little girl entering Barbie Land. 

Here are some of his magnificent desserts that were available that day.

Don Pandan Man

Duck the Balls of a L'orange (Must Try!)

Enter the Dragon (Must try!) This has a tinge of spiciness.

Helen, Where's the Garden? (If you're a black sesame fan, try this.) I didn't really like this as I'm not a black sesame fan at all..

Passionfruit Tart

and of course you can't leave out these yummy Macarons!!

I, personally am not a fan of macarons. But after tasting his macarons... OMG!!!! Instant fan of macarons. 

These were our splurges that day,

HelloKittySandra & RockstarGabriel's macarons.
I would say all the flavours are worth trying especially salted butter caramel (my favourite!)

Mr. Navigator's Cocoon.

The inside goodness

my super splurge! The lemon tart was just mouth watering! The lemon gelatin element just melts in your mouth!

The inside goodness of Enter the Dragon. The green part is actually some wasabi mixture.

One thing I noticed after trying all these yummy goodness is that all of Adriano Zumbo's cakes consists of all textures. From a sponge layer to a gelatin layer, to a mousse layer, to a biscuit layer. While eating, make full use of your taste buds because each layer represents different tastes on our palette from sweet, salty, sour to bitter.

One of my most interesting food ventures.

Last week, I bid farewell to 2 awesome-crazy-amazing girlfriends. 

They are none other than MamaGooseRegina & BebirdNiak 

Since it was their last week in Aussie and their birthdays are just a few days apart, they decided to hold a joint Birthday/Farewell Party.. 

The girls wanted an awesome-possum birthday cake. So we ended up making that awesome-yummy-fat-ass Milo Cheesecake that you see above! 

But before that, on Monday, the 3 of us did a small Milo Cheesecake test-batch. 

Which in the picture below, i'm sure you can tell it was a total success! We celebrated BebirdNiak's birthday that night with a table full of food! Had Rendang and ABC Soup. Even after that huge dinner, we were still able to gobble the test batch up like fat asses. Yeah, we fat like that! 

With that being successful, we then moved on to making a bigger batch of Milo Cheesecake. This time, MandaPanda joined us. 

It definitely wasn't easy for us to bake in Frankston, no one has a electric hand mixer thus, all bakings in this post were baked with much love.. 

And when I mean love, I mean everything being hand-whisked, bit and mixed manually. 

With Cheesecake's base being hand crushed into fine sandy bits.

Cheese filling being hand-whisked with much love.

And at least 150 cupcakes were made with our loving effort 

That was all done on Thursday. On Friday, I went over with PimpYong to prettify the cupcakes with icing cream and fairy sprinkles. 

At night, before heading to the party house, MamaGooseRegina, BebirdNiak, PimpYong, Mr.Navigator and I had sort of a pot-luck dinner together. Family Dinner!!! 

We had MamaGooseRegina's Korean Bulgogi, PimpYong's SoyBean Paste Soup, BebirdNiak & my Vege and lastly Mr.Navigator's Curry Chicky. Mmmm... Food Coma before partying  

At the party house, we arranged all the candies, snacks, and army of mini cupcakes all around for everyone to nibble on. 

Not long after, the party started.

From left: me, BebirdNiak, MamaGooseRegina, PimpYong and ColourfulAmelia

The Bakers for the night: MamaGooseRegina, BebirdNiak, me and MandaPanda

Shayan & Mr.Navigator with the BirthdayGirls.

So the extraordinary part of this party is that there was a theme as well as a competition.

The theme was COLOURS. Where everyone was suppose to be creative with their outfits, be colourful but not clown-colourful. And the girls would be a winner (on in this case, 2 winners) who will win a Mystery Prize.

Girls announcing the winners.

The winners are: PimpYong and ColourfulAmelia 

And this is the Mystery Prize. Creme Caramel made by me  

When others found out what the prize was, everyone started to fight over it. It wasn't because it was yummy, it's because it was a food prize! lol! 

Here's AleemTheChut making his own winning badge. 

Proud winner showing off his winning shoes!

MamaGooseRegina & RockStarMartin performed a few songs before the cake-cutting session.

The Awesome-yummy-fat-ass Milo Cheesecake!! 

And the rest of the night was spent chit-chatting, drinking, snacking and of coz...

CAMWHORING!!!

Those groovy specs sure was popular that night..

At the end of the party, everyone starts bidding the girls farewell..

Awwww 

For me personally, I prefer house parties to clubbing. I really enjoy just hanging out with friends in a house, or mamak, or somewhere chilling as compared to a club. So this party was super awesome for me  

The rest of the week was specially dedicated to these 2 lovelies. On Saturday, the 5 of us headed to Carlton Garden for some sun lovin' fun followed by Sophia's for dinner to re-celebrate MamaGooseRegina's 22nd. Then on Monday, we all headed to Frankston for some Sushi (MamaGooseRegina & I were craving for sushi for days!) and from there, we hung out at MamaGooseRegina's to help her pack while BebirdNiak headed home to pack on her own. For dinner, we had awesome pasta and RockStarMartin joined the fun.

The mission that night was to stay up all night till the 2 girls leave for their flight at 430am. I failed halfway, fell asleep on MamaGoose's comfy bed. LOL!

We moved from the boys' house to Maccas for supper to GAS Station to MamaGooseRegina's home. Absolutely a great ending to this chapter.

Now a little message to you girlies:

Although we've only known each other for 1 semester, but it feels like a couple of years. We first met during our Dolphin trip down Sorrento and we've been glued ever since.

 I remember the fun times we had camwhoring with all the colourful beach houses on Morington Beach..

 

Sharing our excitement bout swimming with the dolphins! 

All the baking sessions..

Partying together! 

Like at Aleem's 21st

Boost Cruise

Random Dinner Nights! 

Yummy Rendang with MamaGoose's ABC soup.

Our Indo Mee night while watching the Royal Wedding.

with awesome desserts!!

A cupcake each!

and the bomb?

Cheesecake! I think this family of elephants have something for cheesecakes.. hahaha

In such a short time, we actually did tons of things together. Lol! I wrote this in your books and I'm saying it here again.. I'm really thankful to have known the both of you!! The 3 of us back here are missing you crazy! We need you 2 to create more noise with us.. Take care of yourselves! We'd all be reunited once again really soon. And this time, we'd be all chilling in Malaysia!!! How cool's that?! 

Me LOVE you girls looooooooooooooooong time!! (and the boys too of coz )

Stay Pretty!! 

xoxo,

SoyanButterfly