32 but feeling 30 :D

Turned 32 exactly a week ago,..this year's bday celebration was rather muted as I was too lazy to plan anything and I think even Jin was a bit tired to plan - must be after effects of Perth trip planning :).

He was sweet enough to surprise me with cake the night before from Lana. We celebrated with Lin, RY and Eelin who was visiting. The strawberry cake was a real miss but the thought was worth a thousand kisses ;)

Actual day - we had brunch at Simply Bread as I was craving sausages. Then Jin suggested checking out the boardwalk at MacRitchie..I never knew they had a 2 km long boardwalk along the reservior..it was really quite fun to walk as there were not many people at 11am that morning. Jin saw a snake and heroicly yelled loud enough to send 10 snakes running - I myself jumped 2 feet back!

Afternoon, I planned a spa treat at The Ultimate Bukit Batok Civil service club. The spa couple rooms are quite nite as they are little standalone villas but the noise from the pool penetrated that otherwise zen atmosphere. We paid $128 (starhub's bday deal) and jin got a body scrub and balinese massage while i had a scrub and facial. I really enjoyed the sweet potato dessert we got after the treatment :)

Evening, we headed to Vivo to catch Enchanted..what a cute disney film and Patrick McDreamy was truly cute.

Bday celebrations followed throughout the week with lunches with Jun at Akashi, marcom mates at ShinKushiya, dinner at Ember with the bday ladies group - still have a couple more to go :)

Back in Msia a week later and celebrated with the usual folks at a seafood restaurant at selayang. We had crabs, mantis prawns, white prawns, garoupa fish and Keat bought me a yummy durian cake.

I made ONE cookie ;)

Seeing all the cute gingerbread men on recent Perth trip got me wanting to bake my own gingerbread men. Especially ones that would look just like the one in Shrek.

So last night I downloaded a recipe from allrecipes.com - it had 200+ reviews, mostly positive so figured I can go wrong. Searched Cold Storage for gingerbread men cookie cutters but all they had was a batch with a bear, hippo, star, flower, heart and turtle mould. At$2, one cant complain too much so I bought that.

Jin helped by setting up the mixer and washing up the used items. My dough was somehow wayy too wet (surprisingly the complaints from the reviews were that the dough was too dry :p) so I only managed to cut one cookie out. (stuffed the remaining dough back in the fridge where I hope it gets much dryer!)

My one perfect gingerbread bear :)..so cute...with 3 mini M&M's as the buttons. Jin ate it for breakfast.. and said it was yummy..hmm, could he say anything else? :p

Weekly treats :)

Finally launched my crazy project..never worked so hard in my past 4 years with HP..putting in 12 hours days on the average for the past 2 months. So very relief that campaign has launched and it's time to take a breather. Finally had time to even consider asking colleagues out for dinner..last wednesday, as jin was working late, i impromptuly asked angela and tricia if they wanted to do din and both surprisingly said yes. we headed to adam food centre for yummy prawn noodles and I tah paued a crab noodle for Jin. cost me $15 but it was a pretty big crab. anyway, when i reached home and while taking my notebook from the back seat, I noticed that Wally the resident car bear had something tied to his neck..Angela the sweet girl decided to give me an early bday pressie and it was a pair of lovely purple dangly earrings..was really touched and happily surprised :)

Back to the crazy work launch - HP decided to throw a party and we had a Gwen impersonator as well as a group of drummers to entertain us. Have to say Gwen and her dancing was rather cheesy but people seemed to be entertained which I guess the purpose was met. Here's prob my last pix with Jun in HP as he goes off to germany next month to start his work life there..very sad that my HB is taking off so soon , to some place where time zones differ..sigh sigh.

Anyway, am so happy today's Friday. And Jin actually got out of work by 6..Adrian my cubemate funnily asked me if Spore was snowing when I told him joyfully that Jin was getting out of work by 6. :p The best treat of the week was having Melaka chicken ball rice for dinner. Von somehow blurt out that she was heading to Melaka to tah pau chicky ball and out of politeness, she asked if I wanted and me being thick skin, of course I said YES! so here's me with my chicken ball rice, on our patio, on a friday evening at 7pm with jin home from work..if only everyday was today :)))

Pawtobello - where doggies roam free

Finally managed to meet up with William and Jenny for a catch up lunch. Decided to drag Gail and Jimmy out too since we have not seen them since Jin's bday. As Bailey the doggy was coming along, we decided to meet at Pawtobello (Mohd Sultan). It's a pet friendly cafe so the minute you walk in, you can choose to let the pet off their leash or tie the leash at your table while you eat. There's a whole doggy menu so we had to make sure we ordered from the right menu ;).

It was really fun to see Bailey's again..such a gorgeous dog - easily the biggest dog in the cafe. The more popular breeds were the schnauzers and surprise surprise, our fav breed, the every cute Westie. I was really excited to see 3 westies! and the last one being a 3 month old puppy who went around sniffing every dog's bum bum. Lol.

Earlier that morning, we woke up..well, i got up early so naturally Jin woke up not much later..since it was not even 8 yet on a saturday morning, we decided to do a picnic breakfast at the Botanical Gardens (BG). The pusher was that mom left behind a whole loaf of bread and seeing we hardly ever ate bread, I decided that the swans and tortoises at the gardens deserve a treat.

So we packed our picnic basket with milk, coffee, char siew pau and a huge pear from our Oz trip and did the 15 minutes walk to BG. Seemingly, every kid in the park had the same idea so there was wayy too much bread being given out and we ended up bringing back the whole loaf minus one slice which I managed to feed to a mutated looking fish in the pond. Here's a sleepy Jin trying to pose enthusiasticly for the camera wishing his wife was not such an early riser ;)

Bro in law comes to visit and Adeline ties the knot!

G hop into Spore last Friday and followed us to KL for Adeline's tea ceremony. The bride looked ever radient and we had good fun "torturing" the guys. Phillip was sporting enough to do some of the "challenges" like eating grapes which has already been licked by 8 different guys *eww* (but he refused to eat the wasabi covered crackers -top pix) but have to say he was very "cheapo" - giving the girls only RM20 dollar ang pows :p

(above pix : happy couple, Jin and G playing around with the headbands, us with the bride in traditional chinese "quah")

After the tea ceremony where we got to check out Adeline's new nest, the "pampering" session started. We all booked ourselves for a hair wash and for RM20, we got a 40 minute hair wash along with head and shoulder massage....then we headed to the manicurist where the guys both got pedicures and I went for the full works. Next day before heading home, we managed to squeeze in a one hour aromatherapy massage (RM30)..ahhh,,.the joys of being in KL for the weekend :)

Not forgetting to mention, we ate like piglets..the eating spree started on Friday at marina food court where we had popiah, kung pow chicky claypot rice and curry laksa..then to Xin Wang cafe for a huge ice kacang. In KL, the food spree continued with Ramli burgers, maggi mee goreng, prawn mee, fried keow teow, siew pau, roti canai, tosai and a full 8 course dinner with shark fins. Poor G could not stomach all the "dirty" KL food and his tummy gave way so he missed the 8 course dinner :(.

Thankfully his tummy improved thanks to Mom's po chai pills - back in Spore, I let him try teh tarik ice cream and lin and ren yuh dropped in with portugese egg tarts, tau fu fah and taiwanese pancakes from Geylang. The food fest continued with bak kut teh, spore blk carrot cake which he thot was a dessert ;), satay, crayfish, stingray and bbq chicky wings..poor G - i think he cld not wait to get away from food crazy spore :)

When you have an apple pie craving in the middle of the night...

...what does one do? Thankfully, the good folks from local ice-cream chain "The Island Creamery" thought this out and taa daa - Apple Pie ice cream. Angela and Charmaine brought these tubs along when they came to our house warming last night. I am definitely leaving some for Gordon when he comes all the way from SF this weekend to let him try.. might even hop in and buy a tub of pineapple tarts flavoured ice cream seeing he is quite a fan of pineapple tarts :). Jin's quite addicted to the teh tarik flavour but my personal favourite is Burnt Caramel..one you start, it's wayyy too hard to stop...:p

Last night's gathering went pretty well. Spent the morning grocery shopping at Tiong Bahru mkt..then Jin was kind enough to accommodate me to check out BMW's X3 SUV..my first time driving a Bmer..was a great experience..am totally gunning for this car vs the more luxurious Lexus..total sucker for brands ..occupational hazard? :D

Back to the gathering - we had fried noodles, satay, chap chye, prawn and mushroom dish (by me!), soon kueh, bak chang and no meal's complete without dessert. I spent the afternoon testing out my molten lava cakes with the oven and temperature and my new moulds which I got from Chinatown earlier. Happy to note that the guests seemed rather contented after consuming the cakes with non other than Tillamook's Vanilla Bean ice cream (13.50 a tub but worth every penny!)

I made some for Karen since it was her bday..here's the bday girl with Lin

Now, back to the X3 driving experience. I really like the compactness of the SUV - it's brother the X5 is HUGE. Jin's concern is that it won't fit our golf bags..I disagree, it fits if you put the bags in diagonally la! hehehe. The drive is really smooth and how cool is it that the rear mirrors tilt down when you engage the reverse gear? this ensures you dont hit those nasty curbs or a silly cat! Sigh, if only money grew on trees...I would get a X3 for me and a Lexus for Jin. X3 X3 X3.....

Port Dickson weekend with the KL friends

Have not been on a group trip for so long so took opportunity of the Raya weekend and organised a trip to PD with the usual KL folks. Managed to get a 3 bedroom suite at Ancasa for 9 adults and 2 littles ones. Was a really fun, relaxing trip - we ate really cheap seafood, played volleyball and frisbee, walked the beach, hung out at the pool and at night, played RISK till 1.30am..wow, no wonder I am exhausted - so many things in only ONE day :)

Short but great trip..already planning where to go next year :)..

Mooncake festival with the girls

This year, we decided that the "homeless" msians should get together to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival. As it was a weekday night and the guys were not free to join , the girls (Karen, Li Mei, Lin and myself) met up at Li Mei's place for this gathering. We had vietnamese paper spring rolls, DIY style..yummy! and I bought mooncakes from Orchard Hotel. The pumpkin snowskin was really good..can't wait for next year to come..we will do a lantern walk next year :)

Jin's 32 :D

Jin turned 32 last Wed. Celebrated the weekend before with dinner at Peach Garden with Jimmy, Gail, Lin and RY. Ordered a carrot cake from Lana..yummy! Yummier than the choc cake.

On his actual birthday, made him a nice cheesecake..and dinner at Bonta. Food was not that great but service was excellent. I still owe him a spa treat..hmm..where should I take him.:p

Brunch at Dempsey Hill

This weekend was a particularly good one..managed to meet up with Ed and Lilaine along with baby Lukas who we have not seen for 4 months..how time flies..decided to have brunch at one of the new places at Dempsey. Unfortunately Ben and Jerry's was not opened so we decided on Jones the Grocer. It was packed but we got a communcal table with another family of 4. the menu listed the usual eggs and pancakes which was what we got along with sides of mushrooms. Not a bad place for brunch as the ambience and atmosphere gave an easy-going vibe. After brunch, we walked around the area and hopped into B&J..wow, the smell of waffles was amazing..I can't wait to come back here to check it out.

Spent the afternoon doing something out of the ordinary..I actually took a afternoon nap :p..felt really good after the nap - we then headed for our 6 hole golf game..it was really fun and Jin hit a PAR at hole 6 - 2 very estactic people were doing high 5's at that green :)

Then it was a quick rush to meet the gang at Whampoa fish steamboat where I had my filled of the delicious soup. After din, RY wanted to check out Timbre in town - we circled around for a good 30 minutes to find parking :p. that night we played MJ till 2 in the morning and I won $4.50 from Karen :)

Quick weekend getaway - Macau and Hong Kong

Jin was invited to attend ex colleague - Rita's wedding in HK so with our cheap JetStar tix bought months ago, we took off last weekend. Flight was ridiculously early at 7am but that also meant we got into HK really early. Decided that instead of staying 2 nites in HK, we wanted to check out the newly opened Venetian casino in Macau so we quickly wove our way to the seaport where the hovercrafts leave for Macau from HK.

Checked into 3 star Hotel Sintra. Although they were having major renovations and therefore lots of noise, since we were out most of the day, it did not really bother us. What was more impt - clean sheets and bathroom..thankfully, they past the test :). I did my usual homework about places to eat and that took us to Lisboa Restaurant where we ordered a meal enough for 4 people..hehe, how greedy. We had the shrimp soup which came in a lovely loaf bread so you could scope the pieces of bread from the side when you dig the spoon in for the soup. Jin wanted the stewed herbal duck and that was a big dish for two...too herby for my liking but Jin enjoyed it. I could not resist but to order the baked crab which was listed in too many reviews..it was yummy..very oily but yummy ;))

Macau (and HK) was very very extremely polluted..the haze hung like a dark cloud over the city and visibility was miserably poor. We managed to catch a fireworks competition..very spectacular and would have been even more so if there was no haze. I like macau..it's so quaint and i love the local biscuit shops where you get to sample everything..I have to say, these shops were quite generous in they amount they let you sample which makes you wonder about the profit margins. :p

We left Macau early as i could not wait to check into the very nice Conrad HK hotel..Jin managed to exchange his points and they gave us a room on the executive floor which meant we got to use the lounge on the 59th floor for free...the lounge faces the beautiful HK harbour but sadly, the view was hampered by the haze. :(

First food stop in HK has to be wanton mee at our favourite shop at wellington road. Got to meet little Ryan finally and he is such a handsome boy.

Spent the rest of the night amusing myself by walking from lan kwai fong (women's street) all the way down to temple street..it was a loong walk and I did not buy anything..finally found myself at the esprit outlet where I managed to get some winter clothes at 50% discount. As jin still wasnt done with the wedding, I found myself craving a foot massage. There was this lady on the street waving pamphelts on cheap foot massages and convinced by her, we walked to a nearby deserted looking building, took the lift to the 13th floor and got into a dingy looking flat. At this point, all my warning signals were peaked...I sat down and quickly smsed Jin all the details and told him to come look for me if he does not hear from me after an hour. Thankfully my fears were unnecessary and it was a proper all business foot massage which I got :)

Our third day was spent rather reluctantly at the hotel lounge - working :p...both of us had to clear important emails..anyway, figured we probably stay healthier staying in the hotel vs walking outside with the pollution. Managed to get out for 2 hours to Causeway Bay where I got 2 boxes of lo poh pang from the famous Hung Heung biscuit shop at Sogo's basement. We headed to the airport pretty early, giving Jin enough time to pack a yummy char siew and duck rice from Cafe Cartel at terminal 1 before our flight home to Spore. Was tempted to pack 2 boxes of Krispy Kremes for the office but decided that it was too much work to hand carry doughnuts onto the flight :D

Weekend with Liza in Spore

Liling finally decided to visit - she came on friday to attend the Tempus -watch and time convention. saturday, we brought her to try out brunch at Din Tai Fung, then left her to attend her seminar. Jin and i got busy - first stop was to shop for a new pair of glasses for me. My eyes are still inflamed so decided to stay of contacts till they stop protesting, Bought a versus branded for $200 frame only. took us less than 10 minutes to decide on the design as we were rushing for our massage session. see the new look me :)

Sat evening, we brought liza to try out Coriander Leaf at Clark Quay. Hv always wanted to check out this restaurant but there are always soo many new restaurants to try in spore...anyway, happy to note that the food was good, although a tad on the pricier side. we saved our stomachs for dessert at Highlander cafe..the scene at Clark Quay was noisy with the rugby season in full swing..here's Jin playing around with one of the chairs from Clinic Bar.

Sunday was a packed packed day..got woken up by Jin wayy too early so that got me on a pretty stoned mood the rest of the day. We took Liza for katong laksa and then after dropping her off, made our way to the driving range. Then it was a quick rush to Clark Quay to watch the Spore Duck Race on the Spore river..the start off time was delayed 1 hour so I had plenty of time to watch the 2 boys next to me hunt for spiders..good grief,...why can't boys be clean like girls? :p

The ducks were off loaded from 2 big trucks..we did not manage to take a close up of the ducks but jin said they were really cute with sunnies on them :)..here's a pix i "stole" from the official website. Anyway, I thought it was Ok to wait an hour to see the water filled with yellow duckies.

And then as we were walking off, we bumped into William and Jenny and of course Bailey the doggy..he's so big now! Very beautiful dog but forgot to take pix of him..all's not lost as William has invited us for dinner so will get my chance to take Bailey's pix soon :)

Sunday evening, I joined Liza at St James powerhouse for the Horumundi Pajama Party. My first PJ party and it was quite odd to be walking around in the open in my PJs :)..however, i survived and also was glad to attend as I managed to pose with 2 slippery cold "friends" :D.

Merdeka Day Party!!

Decided to plan a gathering with the Msian folks in Spore..calling it the Merdeka Party, we decided to go "truly asia" with adam road's nasi lemak, City Satay satays, Crytal Jade's char siew soh, chips and salad. the nasi lemak came with the full suite of compliments - otah, chicky wings, bergedil and fish cake. Had the party at the pool but no one came in their swimming gear so no swimming was done :p. Ordered Lana's famous choc cake for dessert..Gail and YL loved the cake :).

It's been 7 years!! Sept 3rd, 2007

Last Saturday Jin arranged for our 7th anniversary getaway. he wanted the day to be a surprise so everytime I asked him about it, he had a one word answer for me : Secret

To throw me off track, he kept saying we were going to batam..which of course I knew was not where we were going..anyway, after buying me a nice Taylor Made putter from the golf sale at Harbourfront, he handed me a blindfold in the car. kinda corny but hey, who am i to complain ..lol

He started driving around and I of course kept asking where we were going and he just said "secret" :p. then the car stopped and he had to roll down the window on my side of the car and this lady went "welcome to sentosa"..duh! the secret was out, not batam but sentosa. Jin booked us a night at the lovely Beaufort Hotel - complete with a spa package and breakfast for two.

Rooms and breakfast were ok..resort was nice as we got the refurbished garden deluxe room. the spa experience at Spa Botanica was something out of this world..voted best spa in asia, i could totally see why..we had a wonderful scrub followed by a vichy shower/aqua therapy where waterjets sprayed on us as we relaxed on our tummies after the scrub. Half an hour later, we were further pampered with a relaxing swedish massage. worth every penny!! before our spa session, we got to try out the mud spa pool - here's jin covered with mud :).

Dinner was a simple one at food republic vivo and then it was a quick hop to the cinema to catch Ratatouile..however, my dear hubby thought he clicked the submit button when he was buying the tix...so ended up, he did not and there were no more seats left to catch the show..seeing how sad he looked, I decided that dessert would cheer him up so we headed to bakerzin for their trio of tapas dessert :)

Next morning, we got up bright and early and got 2 mountain bikes from the hotel to cycle round the island..it was very calming and peaceful and so fun to see the doggies happily running around the water edge. After an hour of being outdoors, we headed back to fill our tummies with breakfast. Too bad we had to check out a little early as we had the merdeka party to plan ...all in all, it was a wonderful weekend..thanks jin :))

Trekked out by Mulu...

National Day public holiday saw us trekking 8km with heavy backpacks across the rainforest in East Msia - mom's great idea that she wanted to see the famous Pinnacles and Mulu caves. Getting to Mulu itself was a mini adventure - we had to fly spore to KL, KL to Miri and then hop onto small propeller plane to Mulu. We checked into the rustic Royal Mulu Resort and lunch was at the Royal Mulu National Park (the resort charges RM35 for a bowl of curry noodles..good grief..talk about price exhortion!!) - where we had the Mulu laksa (yummy!) for RM10 a bowl.

Then we joined a group of 20 over tourist and walked to see the world's largest caves. Although I do not particularly like caves cos they are usually wet, smelly and dark - the beautiful formations created by nature makes it worthwhile to endure the cave other not so nice elements :P After 2 hours of cave exploring, we settled at the nearby viewpoint area to view 5 million bats coming out of the caves for their nightly rendevous and makan time. These amazing creatures fly over 100km each night..how exhausting it must be to be a bat..but then again, I hv no idea why they need to fly so far to get insects..there were tons of insects just outside their cave :p..how batty ..lol.

Next day, 6am saw us up and out on a longboat ride to see more caves (and beautiful Raja Brooke butterfly) and the boat will stop at the start of the 8km trek into Camp 5 (our home for 2 days). Unfortunately, what I thought would be a nice boat ride turned up to be extremely strenous as the water levels were low and that required major boat pushing. puff puff puff

The 8km trek in was quite relaxing and slow as we did not want to tire ourselves too much..that is, until it started pouring about 5km into the trek..then we scrambled..and walked really really fast..and reached camp 5 pretty soaked. We were introduced into our "rooms" - house on stilts, raised floors with thin mattress and no windows..so you literally get the wind going through the room along with insects, bats and fireflies..talk about going back to nature...i missed my hot water shower and bed immensely :D

The Pinnacles is NOT, I repeat NOT for beginners..only 2.4km uphill and after 1 km, mom had enuff and I was quite happy to follow her down (though quite bummed out not to see the Pinnacles. Jin was sent as our defacto eyes;). Mom and I took ages to climb the 1km downhill and on top of that, we made a wrong turn from Camp 5 and ended up back to Camp really really late, tired and hungry. Was really happy to see that Jin made it safely up and back - within good record time too!

Next day, with sore muscles and legs, we started the 8km trek back at 630am. Thankfully I had my iPod to help make the journey seem shorter...would hv been an uneventful trek back if not for poor mom falling off while crossing the log..thankfully the ground below her was soft and only about 4 feet high..ouch ouch! The long boat ride back was much more relaxing that the trip up as the water level rose thanks to the rain and we were also following the flow of the river.

Was very very happy to check into the Marriot at Miri..back to civilisation..Jin and I cant imagine being as brave and gung ho as mom is at her age..really salute her! For us, next holiday better be at the beach and spa..no more jungles :D