A Week of Openings and Reopenings

This week has seen the local Spotlight store reopen, and a new Countdown supermarket open. That all means one thing - sales!

Yesterday my mum went to the Spotlight sale while I was at the gym. I went to find her afterwards and was surprised to see how packed Spotlight was! I don't think I've ever seen it that crowded before. I have to admit they were mainly older aged people there.

The aisles were quite narrow, especially for trolleys so I asked my mum if I could go to McDonald's while she continued to shop. I know, I know, undoing all my gym work!

Anyway, I went to McDonald's for a little feed. The girl at the counter recognised me and asked how I was doing, and how my brothers were doing! I didn't recognise her, but I just assumed it was probably from the countless Friday nights we go to McDonald's after youth group that she knew me! Now that's what I call good customer service!

Today was the opening of another Countdown supermarket. There is now at least four Countdowns within five minute of our house! This is the supermarket I actually applied for a job at. Countdown is gradually rolling out in-store pharmacies, and so I applied for a pharmacist position there. I never heard back, so I thought it'd be interesting to see what it's like and who's working there.

Once again this supermarket was pretty crowded. It seemed as though the staff were all getting used to their new jobs as well.

I was driving my mum into the carpark and was indicating to turn into a carpark that just became free. A car came from around the corner and I thought I'd let it pass before I turned into the carpark. The next thing I knew was the car driving straight into my car park! How rude! My mum leaned over to honk the horn before I quickly drove off so no one could see me (this car park was right opposite the entrance!). We eventually found another car park.

There were quite a few good deal today: four cans of baked beans/spaghetti for $2, a carton of eight 1.5L Coke/Diet Coke bottles for $10. Some people loaded their trolleys up with cans! There was a limit of one Coke carton per customer, but I saw one couple who each had a trolley with at least three cartons each! I'm guessing they own a dairy...

I ended up getting separated from my mum and walked around the whole supermarket three times before finding her. She's kinda short so is not the easiest person to spot in a crowd!

At least we came away with a trolley full of food! That always makes me happy!

A Good Deal

Today my family and I went to Sky City to take advantage of a deal they were offering - $3.90 for a plate of fish and chips or fish balls and prawn laksa. The deal expires at the end of the week!

We parked in the correct area, and kept our ticket in a safe place this time! We followed the signs to 'The Deli' which eventually led us to the casino. The food place actually turned out to be inside the casino!

Where we were eating was right next to the slot machines, so it was an interesting experience to be surrounded by all these machines going off with their beeping sounds, and coins falling into cups!

I was initially skeptical about how big the meal would be, considering it is at Sky City and there must be some catch to something that cheap! However, it was actually quite good! The plate came with fries, some salad, sauce and three pieces of fish! It was quite filling! Apparently it usually costs just under $10!

We got our parking validated, so we had cheap parking for the next three hours. After we wandered around the casino floor, having a look and trying to find the toilet, we left Sky City, looking for a drink. I originally recommended we go to Burger King for a $1 small drink, and just refill it, but my mum didn't want us drinking too much sweet stuff. We took the cheap route and went to the ground floor of the Aotea Centre and had a free drink of water!

Another Night, Another Night Market

It was only a couple weeks ago we went to the Papakura Night Markets. This time, we went to the Glenfield Night Markets!

Originally it was looking like we wouldn't end up going, as Emily one of the women we were going to go with, just remembered she had a meeting till 7pm, but we then decided we'd just go after. It is a NIGHT market after all!

Next thing we knew, the sky opened up, and the thunder and lightning came along! We called the others and they were still going!

I decided to drive, as I thought I'd be able to get some wet weather driving experience. I ended up taking the wrong turn several times, but eventually we got there...even earlier than everyone else!

We had a little wander around, checking out the food stalls till the others showed up. I was starving by now!

One of the criticisms of our last Facebook Check-In at the Papakura Night Markets was that the photo did not match the status:

so we decided to go all out this time and actually PIG OUT!

We really wanted to try different food. Winston bought some Japanese balls (well they were ball shaped anyway!), while I went for these sticks that look like Chinese churro's! 

Nadine and Leonie bought actual churro's. I think Leonie's addicted to them now since going to the Papakura Night Markets! 

My mum also bought some squid.

Meanwhile, Joylynn really wanted candy floss. For $2, she got a great deal! She didn't actually manage to finish it all either!

After all the eating, we finally decided to have a look at the stalls. The girls bought some cellphone decorations, and then we bought some fruit drinks before it was time to leave as we had to get Joylynn home early!

I can proudly say I drove the family home without getting lost this time!

Late Night Food

I actually had something to look forward to after work tonight - the Pakuranga Night Markets! Leonie, our friend, had never been there before, so we offered to take her, her brother Winston and her mum after I finished work.

Work was quite quiet, but at least the pharmacist I was working with was quite nice and taught me a thing or two!

Work finally finished, and they were all waiting for me in the car outside!

When we got there, it was already quite packed! The markets are held at the Westfield Pakuranga carpark. There were heaps of food stalls and other stalls selling all sorts of goods. We spent most of the time looking at the food as we were all starving! Leonie was the first to buy something, getting a Chinese pancake. Winston went for the Japanese pancake, and then it took us a long, long time to decide what we wanted! I ended up deciding to take the plunge and bought a Chinese pie!

Our parents came back later on and had bought some dumplings and some dim sum.

There was a Christian stall that was wanting people to fill out a survey in order to get a chocolate bar. My mum and brothers completed it and got their chocolate bar.

It was then that we realised we were running out of time as some stalls were starting to pack up! We had a look around at what was being sold. Most of them were selling cellphone accessories and clothes.

There was one last thing we just had to try - Churro's! I've tried them before, but I don't think anyone else had! We went over to the Churro stall only to discover that the girl who was there was one of Aonghas's primary school friends! That was pretty cool!

Winston got a jumbo one!

It was time to go and we were full!

New Zealand's Newest Piecon

Today after church our mum had originally made us lunch to eat, but Winston was keen on trying the new pie KFC are selling. My mum changed her mind and let us walk across the road to KFC to buy one and give it a go.

We used an online coupon to get free regular fries along with our pie so that was a bonus!

The verdict? It was quite yummy. It had chicken inside it, and the filling tasted like potato gravy! If only it was bigger though!

(http://youtu.be/gItyBrUAHJI)

Happy 50th, Pastor!

It is the pastor's 50th birthday this coming Wednesday, so his wife and daughter put together a bit of a surprise birthday for him after church today. 

He was obviously kept out of the loop, or at didn't show that he was aware of it! 

I was teaching the kids recorder, getting them ready to play the Happy Birthday song, when I got a call that everyone was waiting for us!

We went into the new classroom and people had already started singing! They let the kids play Happy Birthday for the pastor afterwards though, so that was nice!

One of the ladies from church had baked two cakes for the pastor so there was plenty to go around!

Cooking Calamari

Tonight we finally cooked the calamari the pharmacist at my work bought me for my birthday. It was quite easy to cook/fry, and it tasted quite good!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQaD5TKnUTE)

A Good Day

Today turned out to be a pretty good day at the office, for the following reasons:

- My boss not only asked me to once again buy her some miso soup, but she shouted me one too!
- I got told I get tomorrow off work!
- I got to spend the day blister-packing!

- Oh and I ate macaroni out of a jar for lunch...

To finish off this wonderful day, Jenny and I had dinner at Tim and Gabrielle's house to discuss the church camp concert as our youth group is in charge or organising it!

Spicy Birthday Dinner

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAMISH!

We decided to go to the restaurant in Mt Albert we regularly go to (the same one we went to just a few days ago on Sunday night!) to celebrate Hamish's 25th birthday after work.

We did visit Harvey Norman (or Andrew Norman as my dad likes to call it) to check out their special sale before we went though. Some salesman was trying to sell us an outdated laptop. What was worse was that it was a display model!

As he was talking, I started looking at the tablets and went to pick one up when I set the alarm off! That was embarrassing...

We went off to the small restaurant in Mt Albert. Our mum was a little more relaxed about what we chose, so we chose some fried squid and chicken. What we didn't pay enough attention to was the word SPICY that was in front of it on the menu! I was expecting mild, not super mild! Then again, I have a really low tolerance for spicy foods.

That was OK though, the food was still good and made us full!

Boy Hamish you're getting old!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjmTG0g8feI)

When We're Together Snowmen Come to Life

I met up with Angie after work to check out a few shops and then to Starbucks as my treat since she had just finished her last exam, and that's where I tried this drink called the 'Gingerbread Latte'!

It tastes like gingerbread kisses!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5p0Fy0OE3w)

Hacked!

This morning I had to lead children's worship, so I stayed up late last night till 3am practising a couple Chinese songs (looks like I'm not very good at dancing and singing at the same time, especially when I'm singing in Chinese!).

I also tried to come with something meaningful to link all the songs together instead of just singing one song after another:

In the Bible Jesus told his followers about two men. One was a wise man – he listened to Jesus and built his house on rocks. Another man was foolish – he didn’t listen to Jesus and he built his house on the sand. Who knows why he did, maybe he wanted to get a nice view of the ocean!
When the rain and the storm came along, the house that the wise man built on the rock stood firm and didn’t crumble. As for the foolish man’s house on the sand…well the rain came down and as the flood came up it washed his house away!
Jesus is the wise man who knows how to build good houses. More importantly, He knows the right way for us to live our lives, so if we listen to Him, we won't get into trouble like the wise man. If we ignore Jesus' wise instructions and try to live by our own rules, we may have a disaster and no one else will be able to help us. 

SING WISE MAN BUILT HIS HOUSE UPON THE ROCKS 

Hands up if you’ve ever felt saaaaad, like when when someone at school was being mean to you. You know, sometimes these kinds of things happen and you don’t know what to do, but one thing you can always rely on is Jesus being there for you, as long as you let him into your heart.
With Jesus in your heart, you can stay strong and overcome anything!
So the song we’re about to sing is about a time when Jesus got on a boat with some of his disciples. Now a storm came along and as Jesus slept in the boat, the disciples started to freak out! Jesus reassured them everything would be OK and Jesus being Jesus, he calmed the storm and everything was OK! 

SING WITH CHRIST IN THE VESSEL 

So when you don’t know what to do and you’re having a tough time, there will always be someone who can help you. He’s so great he created everything around you, the Earth, the stars, your mum, dad and even your cat!
Can anyone tell me who he is? 

SING AH LORD GOD 

God loves us so much and if we truly love him we should praise him. Make sure you let him into your heart, and love him with all you’ve got – pray to him and listen to what he wants you to do, as he knows what is best for you. 

SING PRAISE HIM  

Let me know what you think! The feedback I got from a couple of kids was they had learnt all this years ago! Well thank. You. Very. Much! Apparently my Chinese eeerrrrrmmm....I admit I forgot some of the Chinese words and mumbled through those songs. I told the kids to sing as loud as they could to cover me up!

Today was a special day, as it was Ada's farewell party after the service. Ada has been at our church for a long time, and was in fact Hamish and my first Sunday School teacher when we joined the church way back in 2002.

We sang a few songs to start off, then watched a photo slideshow which was quite touching (I was in one of the photos boo-yah!), before a few people came up to share their stories. (I'll post some photos as they become available)

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zgmSTl_CEI)

Us Oddfellows had to leave slightly early to help set up tables and food for afterwards. This is where it all started...I let someone play with my phone and they got into my Facebook account and posted stuff on my wall:

People were still commenting on it even after I posted that it was a hoax when I got home! I don't think someone's messed with any of my social networking accounts since a few years ago when SHE changed my Bebo page!

As for the food, it was very nice! It didn't last too long once everyone came out!

We all had a mass group photo with Ada, before smaller groups had photos with her. Our youth group and our family managed to get photos taken together with her.

She's not leaving immediately so there's still a little time to say our goodbyes to Ada but hopefully she will do well in Hong Kong. We'll miss her!

After teaching the kids music, a few of us went to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant for an early dinner (and when I say early I mean 4pm EARLY!). I had a big bowl of meat noodle soup and felt full after it, but right now I'm starving!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLZ13oG7iCM)

Baking for a Good Cause

Today was our church's bake sale organised and run by our youth group. Yesterday Oddfellows were divided in three groups, each meeting at a different house to bake some food to sell today.

This morning we had English service and I was a back-up singer to On who was leading worship, while Cleo was on keyboard. The only problem was that the keyboard wasn't working! We ended up having to sing without music. The upside though was that we could hear everyone singing!

I also had to do the Bible reading as well. Talk about full-on Sunday!

Sunday School only lasted for 15 minutes since we had to leave early to prepare for the bake sale.

The bake sale was held outside the front entrance of our church since it was a sunny day today. We had rainbow cupcakes, caramel slices, ULTIMATE brownies, noodles, lollies, coffee and other food. 

As soon as adult Sunday School finished, there was a stream of people coming out to buy food! Many of them gave us more money than we were asking for the food, telling us to keep the change! This is probably because it was all going to a good cause - our church building!

I didn't bring any money, so luckily my mum bought me some food. I tried the cookies and a curry puff, and I have to say they tasted really good! I wanted to try a rainbow cupcake, since the last time we tried baking rainbow cupcake at youth group was a fail, but they all sold out! I managed to save two caramel slices for Rebecca and me to have our next challenge! I had to put it on my 'tab' of course.

 Eventually when our food started running out and it started to die down, we dropped our prices, kept pushing and eventually got rid of most of the food to raise a grand total of ~$1090!

Well done Oddfellows!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6zZzTuNZjY)

To finish off the day, I had my challenge with Rebecca - to see who could eat a caramel slice the fastest. I was even generous enough to give her a ten second head-start! The result was inconclusive though with the challenge sorta ending in...a tie...

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krFObwFD1b8)

Cheers for the Cheeseburgers!

You may recall a few months ago when McDonald's last offered $1 Cheeseburgers, we took advantage of this and went on a Cheeseburger-buying spree. Well, this time McDonald's has this promotion that runs till Wednesday where you have to check-in to McDonald's on Facebook and then show the person at the counter the 'online voucher'. You'll then be able to claim your $1 Cheeseburger.

My mum, Hamish and I went to McDonald's after church today with the Jireh and his family, and Tommy and his family. Since we were there, we thought we'd take advantage of this! It was quite a mission though with McDonald's free Wi-Fi not working on our iPod's! I had to resort to turning on my phone's mobile internet and then using my phone as a mobile hotspot to allow our iPod's to connect to the internet.

It was slow and painful, and my iPod was on the brink of dying but we made it! Jireh was the first to order, and when he showed the guy at the counter his iPod, the guy had no idea about the promotion and had to ask his manager. When his manager confirmed it, the guy asked Jireh how many Cheeseburgers he wanted! After Jireh was done, I asked for three Cheeseburgers and Hamish did too.

Later we picked Aonghas up from work and went back to McDonald's where he bought another five. We'll be having Cheeseburgers for the next few days!

Baking Time

Tonight our youth group had another baking night for our activity night. Jireh and Grace organised everything, which is just as well since Grace is one of the baking enthusiasts in our youth group!

The original plan was to use this night as a test to see how well we could bake and whether our baking would be good enough to sell to church members so we could help fundraise for the church renovations.

We got there a little late as we had to pick up Cleo from the mall and also buy some self-raising flour (as we offered to bring that ingredient!). When we got there, everyone had already been split into groups, one group baking chocolate chip cookies, one group baking egg tarts, one baking red bean pastry puffs and one group baking rainbow cupcakes.

I was put into the red bean pastry puffs group, but Andrew, Amy and Antonia had pretty much finished by the time I joined. All I could help out with was poking holes into the pastry! We just passed the time making the most of the egg leftovers we had by putting it the microwave and making omelettes. I never knew it was that easy to make omelettes! I also discovered that Phillip is my jacket twin! We both have the exact same jackets and bought them from the same place!

The cookies were the first to go into the oven, and they looked good! There was one really huge cookie. If only all Subway cookies were that big! While they were in the oven, Amy, Antonia and I were trying to get make an omelette but the girls ended up burning it in the microwave! It tasted a little plasticky!

(http://youtu.be/NraVbIRO8UQ)

The egg tarts went in next and then it was the pastry puffs. The rainbow cupcakes went in last.

As they were in the oven, we decided to surprise Eva by singing her Happy Birthday and presenting her with a birthday cheesecake!

(http://youtu.be/N-1F5DG_fV0)

The rainbow cupcakes came out of the oven but they were burnt! It looks like whoever left them in must've got Celsius mixed up with Fahrenheit! Although we were initially disappointed and gutted, we soon discovered that the insides of the muffins still tasted good!

After a photo with all our food, it was time to eat! I only managed to try one of each (and maybe a second chocolate chip cookie) before it was enough for me. I didn't need dinner after that!

There was also this new girl Kathy who had joined us who was visiting us from America who shared with us what America is really like. It was quite interesting! She also can play some traditional Chinese instrument. It's just a shame she's returning to America next Saturday!

I think after a little bit of tweaking we should be ready to sell our baking to the church members!

(http://youtu.be/pgnJkmNOVhw)

Walking it Off

Today my family and I went to Imperial Garden Restaurant for another round of yum cha buffet which made us all feel bloated afterwards! We had an hour and a half to eat though, so we all tried different tactics of not being full for longer by pacing ourselves!

Afterwards we had a stroll along Queen Street to walk off the meal, and opposite us was a small but loud protest for 'Democracy in Syria'. There was a policeman on a motorbike following them, as well as a couple policemen keeping an eye on them and helping them cross intersections as they always took longer than the timer that counts down how long you've got left!

(http://youtu.be/Nf4AHPkn5V8)