Month: October 2020

05/10/2020

Birthday today. I’ve decided to stay at yesterday’s age forever, so every year from now on it will be last year’s age.

I made a bowl of longevity noodles for lunch to start the celebration, with chicken stew from last night.

In the afternoon, we went onshore and saw a little brother and little sister fishing at a small pier. Sister:”you didn’t catch any fish.” Brother: “Why are you talking so negatively.” I was amused these words came from a little boy. The boy reported his results to us when we returned: two small fish, one was released, the other died and was fed to seagulls….

In the evening, Chef Ning cooked up her signature prawn dish: first take off the head of the shrimp and fry it with onion, ginger and garlic, then add cooking wine to make a red sauce, add soy sauce and other spice to taste and put it aside, then start to fry the prawn with garlic, and finally pour the sauce back into the pan, add starch water to thicken the sauce.

Second main course was a rack of slow cooked ribs bought from Coles, just added some garlic and chilli on top to roast in oven. It came with nice smoky flavoured sauce. It was as tasty as TGI Friday’s famous fibs.

Third dish was pan fried asparagus. It was also fried just right.

Then there was a dessert, which was half melted and had the texture of chocolate mousse.

Finally, there was a swing version of the birthday song with a candle blowing session.

Perfect.

03/10/2020

Last night was Bob’s last night in Mustang and early this morning he drove south in search for his new boat. We went to the dinghy dock to collect Mustang’s dinghy then starting to move things in. The new boat has less storage space than the old one, so it’s going to take a lot of organising to get everything in there.

In the afternoon, I went ashore to take a shower and scrub off half a pound of dirt.

In the evening boiled soup with shrimp head, then made into delicious curry laksa.

02/10/2020

An early morning trip to Bob’s to sign the papers and Mustang is officially ours! Last night Bob called to say he was going to Brisbane to look at boats and needed to pay a deposit. He asked J if he could pay the balance one month in advance. He offered a thousand dollars off. J accepted immediately.

This afternoon, we went to register our new boat, all of J’s IDs are from Victoria, and he doesn’t have his full name on his driver’s license (including the middle name), so it’s very troublesome to register a boat in Queensland, you need a passport, birth certificate and other supporting documents, it’s really ridiculous, the bureaucracy here is comparable to some large developing countries, so the registration is unsuccessful, may have to register Mustang as a Victoria boat.

We invited Bob over for dinner tonight, and I made Thai pineapple boat with prawn fried rice, which was very well received. He even sent pictures to his wife (she is Thai) and was complimented again by her.