granted that melbourne’s weather is weird, on that day it was even weirder. sunny turned to cloudy; cloudy turned to angry rain; angry rain turned to sweltering heat before the heavens poured with vengeance again. all within a span of 6 hours.

that was the heaviest and longest rainfall i’ve seen in the two years that i’ve lived here. some streets were flooded and people were outside their houses sussing out the situation as if they, too, couldn’t believe what was happening.

it was a scene i was all too familiar with, coming from a country where you only need a bit of rain for the floodwaters to rise. at worst, lives and properties are destroyed. at best, it brings people outside together for some extemporaneous fun.

so, no, a little bit of flooding down our street didn’t really shock me. what shocked me, though, was that the ceiling in our garage-turned-studio collapsed because of the water overflow on the roof. now that was a stressful scenario to come home to. also, a very expensive reminder to clean our gutters on a regular basis.

but it’s all good now. hopefully we won’t get any more of that freak kind of rain.

rewinding back before collapsed ceilings and flooded streets, there was me and my family in a rented van driving to dromana, one of the suburbs in mornington peninsula that boasts of a nice beach where the water isn’t as frigid or as dangerous. i’ve only been there once before. the first and last time i had a swim, although “swim” is such an ambitious word for somebody who was merely trying to survive the onslaught of waves.

we didn’t really have much of an itinerary. i would’ve wanted to go to this heritage house nearby but apparently, you need a reservation especially if you’re a large group, which we were. i still wanna go there, though. i’m keeping that place in mind.

had charcoal chicken to wait for the rain to settle down and see if the sun was ever gonna make an appearance. thank god it did. even if it was only for a few hours before it started pouring again. at least the kids had a bit of fun at the beach.

okay. so what would’ve been a day of blogging about this rather short trip turned into 4. all because i decided i wanted to try making a video with the assumption that the whole process was gonna be a walk in the park — slap the clips on the timeline, add some feel-good music and voila! easy peasy.

it was hard work, you guys. i’m not even kidding. i’m just lucky i had jeff to teach me the ropes or i would’ve given up within the first five minutes. although to be completely honest, there were a couple of times i still wanted to give up. i don’t have a lot of patience when it comes to editing videos but if i was able to successfully finish this one, it was because i found the challenge somewhat exciting. same way masochists find self-inflicted pain kind of liberating.

turns out vegas pro wasn’t actually that bad. i mean, you know, after a while you do get the hang of it. jeff assured me that it will get easier the more i do it so we’ll see how that goes.

for now, i’m just happy to have been able to create this video. it’s simple but, omg, watching raven is the cutest!!!

*raven at 8 months old