My favorite cafe - Cafe Roma

I knew where to find our breakfast in Christchurch - my favorite cafe in town - Cafe ROMA.



When I lived in Christchurch I came to this cafe at least once a week. They serve fantastic breakfast and coffee. And it is in an old building with wooden paneled walls, high ceilings, timber floor and fire places - nice and cozy. It was nice to find nothing had changed, the cafe was still there and the food and coffee were still fabulous!!

Matthew had eggs Benedict, Oliver had fruit salad, and I had french toast. I wish we have place like this in Brunei...





They still give a piece of chocolate fish with your coffee :)

A quick visit to Christchurch

We are off to Christchurch for the night today. We have booked a hotel in the inner city so that we can do lots of walking around (Christchurch is a great city for that).

When we walked into the room we booked, we were very impressed. Even though it was the cheapest deal we could find online, the room we got had a king bed and a baby cot for Oliver with a fantastic view of the Port Hills.



Oliver stood against the window and spent a long time looking at the cars, buildings and the hills.

Then we walked through Cashel Mall to get our lunch. Suddenly we heard a loud noise and found these people performing!!



They are the national champions of Kapa Haka and were performing to raise funds to create more awareness about Maori culture among the schools in NZ. The performance lasted only for 15min or so but they were just fantastic! We loved it!!

Oliver was very engaged in the performance, maybe he was overwhelmed or just scared by the noise - especially the Haka

At the end of the performance we got to get some photos with the KaPa Haka group.



Oliver wasn't sure what was going on.... then



He discovered he was surrounded by strangers!

Back to our lunch...
I have been asking Matthew to take me to a cafe where I can eat bluff oysters, the price for those oyster has gone sky high - $25 for half dozen (I am sure they were much cheaper when we lived in Christchurch). They were so yummmmmyyy, I could have eaten lots more (we found anther cafe the next day and I did get to eat more!).



And this is what we had for main - a huge platter of fresh bread, cheese, meat and seafood.



It was enormous! Oliver looks so small in this photo...

We were so full but finished all the food on the plate!! Great food, fresh air, warm sun, nice company - I am so happy to be back here (it was actually summery today).

More relatives

Oliver met more of his relatives today. Matthew's youngest cousin Thomas and his sister Sara.



Oliver and Thomas



Thomas's girlfriend Kelly and Sara

Playdate at Jonathan's

Jonathan was born 6 weeks before Oliver. His father Craig is one of Matthew's cousins. They live about one hour away from Timaru and today we visited them with Peter and Jeanne (Matthew's uncle and aunty).

Oliver was very excited to meet his second cousin. He has a trick to make a good impression with new friends - wear something froggy.



Hi Jonathan my name is Oliver - Hi Oliver! I am Jonathan, I like your froggy bib.



Any similarities???



They swapped their toys and had a taste of each other's toy.



Licinda and I decided it's time to play Teletubbies!

Oliver was lucky to visit Craig's farm, but unfortunately we missed the milking of the cows. We were told they have 1200 cows to milk twice a day - lots of milk!! Craig also showed us high tech machine that keeps track of each cows milk and heath. It was so cool.



Thank you Craig, Licinda and Jonathan for having us, we had a wonderful day!!

Oliver in action

Here is a cute video clip of Oliver on the swing. Check out his legs!!

Fun on the swing

Today Oliver got to try a swing for the first time. He was sooooo excited. Look at those smiley faces!





And those little teeth :)

A house in Timaru

We are now in Timaru, a little town near Christchurch (about 2 and half hours drive) - This is where Matthew was born. I visited this place a few times before but never spent much time here to look around.

Merryn took us to Douglas street this morning. She told us that there is a house at the end of this steep drive way.



At the end of the drive way there was a house overlooking the golf course





This is the house Merryn grew up in. She told us as a small kid she spent lots of time in their big back yard - the golf course - how awesome is that to have such a big grass area to run around!?

Who told us it's still Summer!?

We had a reasonable amount of sleep on the plane and arrived in Auckland at 10:30am.
Lindsay met us at the arrival gate to collect Dennis and our Auckland suitcase.
Merryn and us have decided to continue our journey to Christchurch without stopping in Auckland. So after saying good bye to L&D, we followed the blue line from the international terminal to the domestic terminal - it was a bit windy but was nice and WARM.

After just over an hour of flying we arrived in Christchurch safely.
BUT... IT WAS SO FREEZING COLD !!! Look at Oliver the caterpillar in this photo.



I remember the cold wind in Christchurch (I lived here for 7 years in total) and this is the reason we don't visit here except for warm summer time. Someone told me it was still summer.

I really hope the temperature will improve soon.

Merryn and Dennis have returned

M&D had two weeks holiday in England and are now back in Brunei.
They were planning to spend 5 days with us here in Brunei but unfortunately they had to change their plans. So they are leaving Brunei tonight - "with us".

Oliver is very lucky to travel with his grandparents!!!



Oliver with his Merryn and Dennis

What happend to the Brunei Roses??

Those of you who follow the Brunei Roses blog are wondering what has happened to it. There have been no updates since two weeks ago...
Where have they gone?? What are they up to??

Well we had a family situation (not a good one) and suddenly had to fly into New Zealand. We decided to come down here on the 16th at 14:00 and we were on the plane at 20:30 that night. We spent the last week and a half in the South Island and didn't have good internet connection - so that's why - but I have been taking a number of photos on my iphone (since I was too rushed to pack my proper camera) so there will be lots of new posts for you to read soon! (and I will post them according to the dates things happened).

Quiet Sunday Morning

It's Sunday. Our amah Rosie has a day off so there was no vacuuming nor washing noise in the house this morning. Matthew had an overnight flight to Perth so Oliver and I were home alone. After having breakfast, I turned the TV on. Every Sunday morning there is a debate on Astro Japanese channel (if you are interested, it's on 963 - NHK). When I get a chance I watch it to see what is happening in Japan.

I left Oliver on his play mat (just next to our TV area) while I watched the program. And suddenly I had this odd feeling - being able to watch TV without being interrupted by Oliver. He usually comes to the coffee table or just makes lots of noise to get attention. But not today. Odd... I went around to where he was sitting and found this! This is why he was so quiet!!



My friends suggested I should buy 10 packs of these wipes when I get on the plane, then he will be quiet for a long time!! Not a bad idea ha?!

I learnt today, when kids are exceptionally quiet - not a good sign...

(✈ Perth - Brunei)

Noisy eater

Oliver has figured out how to make funny noises when he eats.



At least he is eating very happily....

Lovely afternoon

This afternoon we went to our friend's place for a playdate.

It was a mission for me to get there as I am quite quite bad at navigating by myself. My navigator sitting in the back of the car was singing alone and talking to himself but wasn't a great help.

After a few u-turns we finally got to the simpang (street) we were looking for (I am sure Oliver knew I was bit lost). And guess what? There were two simpangs very close to each other and I turned into the wrong one, adding an extra u-turn to our journey... I am losing confidence...

Others were already there and kids were having a fantastic time in the little swimming pool. Oliver got changed and joined the crowd but unfortunately the pool was a little bit too deep for Oliver to sit in so he stood there! He tried the water slide and he loved it. He also enjoyed chatting (?) and munching biscuits with the big boys (he was still the smallest).





(I think he needs another haircut, what do you think?)

While kids were playing, us parents had a nice cafe latte and cakes. The atmosphere was just so perfect. What a lovely afternoon we had!

(✈ Brunei - Perth overnight)

My local vege market

We get most of our groceries from Supasave (supermarket) plus I often use our local vege market to get fresh veges. It is just down the road from our place and they are very fresh and cheap. It doesn't sell any veges they don't grow locally, such as broccoli and cauliflower but has a wide variety of other vegetables.



I often buy potatoes, onions, carrots, eggplants, beans, radishes, goya, lady's fingers (okra), and other green Chinese vegetables. And we also buy freshly made tofu from there.



The ladies there are always friendly (but with my Malay the conversation doesn't go too far...but to be honest with you this is where I practice my Malay). Particularly this lady in the photo. She shows me how to pick fresh veges and is always honest with the weighing and pricing. I often wonder if she is getting the nice fresh ones for me, who she sells those older not nice ones to...



My vege lady!!

Here is what I got today (the purple root ones and pear looking one are for my amah so I don't know what they are called nor how to cook them).



All these for just $4!!

Sandpit Visit

Today was our first time to attend the early Friday session of Geckos because the notice board says on Fridays they visit sandpits. I thought Oliver will just eat the sand and I was concerned it will be soooo hot outside. Well this is where we played today.



It was a large covered area (you still feel you are outside) with sandpits and lots of other outdoor play zones. They even had fans working so we didn't get too hot. Oliver didn't know what to do with the huge space around him but very quickly got into chasing balls and just crawling around the area.





Note: Oliver had his new "froggy pants" on today and guess what!? He had some girls chasing after him as they wanted to touch his frogs!!

(✈ Brunei - HK - Brunei)