Home for a visit and yet another holiday

I'm glad that today dawned nice and sunny – I would have bawled if we had to depart Melbourne in a hail of rain and gloom which had been a big probability seeing that the past few days had been rainy and cold.

We leave later tonight (well, it's really early Friday morning since our flight is just past midnight) for a much anticipated trip back to Singapore to attend a close friend's wedding, see my family and our friends and to hit our favourite local food places. Midway, we're headed to New York for 2 weeks - A is scheduled for training and conferences at his company's headquarters and I am going to catch up with my old friend C, shop and sightsee. Thankfully, a couple of our friends will also be with us for the later part of the trip so I don't spend the entire 2 weeks at Barneys!

I spent most of today packing and getting the apartment in order. In between, I took a quick walk down to my favourite cooking emporium, The Essential Ingredient at the Prahran Market, to get some olive tapenade my mom requested. I am distracted by the display of some new produce that's just in before I find what I came out for. I wasn't about to lug back a 600g or a 1.5kg jar (it will just molder in my mom's fridge) so I detour to Oliveria, an olive oil emporium just across the road (and a little bit). I've been meaning to come to Oliveria for a while, as some of the olive oil and balsamic vinegar stocked there are produced locally in Victoria. Oliveria is out of the locally-produced tapenade so I settle for a small jar imported from Italy (the irony of it). Everything I see in The Essential Ingredient and Oliveria today is tempting me to buy one of each for foodie friends/cooks back home but there is a limit of our luggage this trip around!

Here's a photo of the garden outside our apartment (aptly named Les Jardins)

I enjoy my walk back immensely, today being a really nice spring day. I see that the trees on our street have left their barren look behind with winter and have started sprouting leaves. The garden outside our apartment is also looking very well, with flowers in full bloom. I'm a little sad that we'll be missing the early part of spring, where flowers and trees start budding and blooming – we'll be back in Melbourne on 1 October and spring would be in full swing by then. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to heading home and the big Peranakan feast with family that's planned for this Sunday.