They also played their new album ‘The Incident’ from start to finish. The theatre was lovely too - very old with decorative ceilings and walls, several levels to view from with some couches to sit on as well.

Monday night was our French lesson and I can now say ‘My name is…’ and ‘How are you?’ proficiently along with a little falteringly phrases like ‘I don’t understand Italian’ or ‘I don’t speak Spanish’.  It will be fun to try it out in the next couple of years if we make it to Europe.

Saw Avatar on Thursday night which was spectacular though I found the plot pretty lacking.  I was expecting a lot so was probably a little disappointed.

We started the weekend with a lovely dinner at Comme Kitchen restaurant off Collins St and stayed the night in the city.

No wonder I needed to have a little lie-down yesterday afternoon and napped for 1.5 hours!

For 2010 NYE I was in Melbourne - surprising to think that I’ve lived here for over 4 years now too. If you had asked me in 2000 where I would be in 10 years, I may have said Melbourne as a possibility but it would have only been a vague notion that I might have moved somewhere other than Sydney by then.  And if I hadn’t met Andrew, likely that it may never have happened. But I’m very glad it did!

We celebrated NYE with some of our immediate family (from both sides which is a rare occasion) at our favourite restaurant, Afghan Village in Camberwell. It was fantastic and a great way to start the year. The rain bucketed down at 10pm so we were quite glad we hadn’t decided to go into town to watch the fireworks also!

It was great going back to KL again after our honeymoon there last year because we knew a lot about the city already but had time to explore a lot of places we didn’t see before. Favourite experiences this time round were the Islamic Arts museum, Old China cafe in Chinatown and the luxury of staying at the KL Hilton.

Singapore lived up to its reputation of being incredibly humid and next time I would stay closer to a a train station as the walk from our hotel was a bit too much.  Highlights were chilli crab at a beachside hawker centre in Eastern Singapore, the Singapore Zoo Night Safari, temple in Chinatown and a great middle eastern meal in Little India.  Also was amazed at how clean and organised Singapore is - makes for very easy travelling.

Sabah on Borneo was our last destination (apart from a final night in KL at the end) - staying in the capital Kota Kinabalu or KK as it is commonly known and 1 night at Sandakan on the other side of the island to visit the Sepilok Orangutan sanctuary which was a real highlight of the whole trip.  The orangutans are so cute and human-like.

From KK we visited an island for a day and went snorkelling which was a great way to spend my birthday and we also hired a car and visited Mt Kinabalu which was also spectacular.

On the safari tour we drove amongst rhinos, zebras, giraffes, hippos and various other smaller animals.  On the walking trails, we saw lions, cheetah, wild dogs, monkeys and meerkats (in enclosures).

It still feels weird that those animals are here in Australia and that they’re captive in a zoo. On the positive side, the zoo does breed endangered animals and releases them into the wild e.g. a Mongolian wild horse that was close to extinction.

Looking forward to seeing some exotic wildlife on our trip to Borneo in Malaysia in the next couple of weeks.

Glad I was indoors for that!

It has been particularly cold the last couple of days even though it had warmed up the last couple of weeks.  Don’t really get consistent warm weather in Melbourne until December.

However the leaves on the silver birches at the front of the house have all appeared in the last few weeks which I find quite amazing.  I don’t know how they suddenly pop out without us noticing.

The other plants have started to grow more too and it has been great to have some regular rain recently too.  I planted some nasturtium seeds and a couple have sprouted. We need to get some more plants for the flower bed outside the kitchen window so I have been reading up a bit from some books borrowed at the library on plants that don’t need much watering.