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 :)..