home-cooked dinner in melbourne

had a taste of ida's first home cooked meal in australia. she had picked up some cooking tips from joel who was back in singapore for the varsity break. she cooked a pot of soup using chicken bones, carrot and onion. she fried vegetable - cabbage - with lean chicken meat.

late this morning, we drove to danedong weekend market to buy the foodstuff. danedong is about 12km from clayton. it is quite easy to get there as it is also along the princes highway. i bought some donuts and ida bought a doner (lamb) kebab. she had it for her lunch. danedong market is no different from victoria market or any of the weekend markets in australia.

we were at danedong for about an hour only as ida also wanted to visit springvale to get some asian foodstuff. i think saturday is not a good time to go to springvale. although there are more than 1000 parking spaces in the vicinity, we were unable to find a single unoccupied lot. gave up and headed for clayton. bought sesame oil, oyster sauce and soy sauce from the asian grocery in clayton. had my lunch in the chinese vietnames restaurant.

we finished all the food; there was no leftover.

ida's accommodation in melbourne

ida is not staying with ivy although they are both in melbourne and studying in the same university. ivy stays in a four-room townhouse and all the four rooms are occupied. ida cannot squeeze in with her sister as the room is meant for only one person. anyway, ivy's room is also clogged up with many things acquired over the years.

ivy managed to find her a place, three streets away from where she stays, at lantana street.

this house along lantana street also has four rooms. ida occupies the room downstairs, an en-suite, which means the toilet/bathroom is attached. her room is almost twice the size of ivy's. her housemates - all girls - are also studying at monash university. two of them - cassandra and cissy - are still here while the third one - angeline - has returned to china for the holidays.

she has a single divan bed and a study table with an executive chair. since coming here, i have tidied up the internet cable, connected the apple laptop to the internet and plugged in the wires for the electrical appliances. we had bought the adapters from mustafa.

we went to chadstone to get a waste paper basket, a laundry basket, a study lamp, a set of straw baskets and odds and ends. i also got her a mobile phone - a sony ericsson - and a line. i will be terminating her starhub line when i get back to s'pore.

ida has organised her stuff in the room on her own quite well, considering that she hardly lent a hand at home. she makes her bed when she gets up; something she has shied away from doing back home.

problem with student visa

ida was due to leave for australia on sunday, 1 july 2007 but because of a delay in getting her student visa, she had to leave at a later date. how did this problem arise?

idp gave us information on the application for a student visa on 11 june. ida did not respond to it until 16 june. we downloaded the forms from the website, not realising that the information on medical check-up was on the same forms. went down to idp at relc to make enquiries and was told that we had to decide on where to have the medical, including x-ray, done on our own. we picked sata woodlands.

the medical results were sent over to australia on 22 june but the x-ray result was not given to them until 25 june. as 1 july got nearer, we started to panic. went down to idp to see if they could help in any way to speed up the process. they were not very reassuring, saying approval normally took one week to ten days after receipt of the medical report.

we kept going on-line to check the status of our application. on 29 june, when there was still no indication of the visa being granted, i called the immigration department in perth and was told that they were still awaiting clearance from the health section. their advice was not to travel to australia until the visa was approved, otherwise we would have to make an onshore application in australia, pay the aus$430 and go through another round of health check.

i also went down to the australian high commission at napier road to seek their assistance. they told me that there was nothing anyone could do to help but wait for the approval to come from the immigration office in perth.

we called the travel agent to cancel the two tickets (booked on sia) and made fresh booking for a flight leaving after the 1 july. all flights on sia were fully booked up to the 23 july. fortunately, we managed to secure two tickets on emirates leaving on wednesday, 4 july. then, we had to pray that the approval for visa would come before the 4 july.

on monday morning when i checked online, the approval message was displayed. so relieved that the problem was resolved.