pENguiN~

My home :)

2011-09-27T23:11:00.013+08:00

Ever since I moved to Penang in 2006, I only went home during CNY. The last time I went home was in 2009 CNY, and after that I never go home ever since I'm pregnant with Eunice, until recently. My brother got married in Aug and of course I have to go home. :)... and we took Eunice for her first flight at her 18th month.

There are some special things in my home. :)... Besides my family, the home cooked food, the famous Sarawak kampua mee and their laksa, there are some other special things in my home that I cannot find else where.

My dad plants vegetables. And no, he doesn't do that for a living. He worked in a bank before he retires, and now he's helping a relative doing some office work. My grandfather was a farmer. Hence that's where my dad and two of my aunties got the skill from. He uses natural fertilizer (he used to ask my brothers to pee in the potty :P) and no pestiside for his vegetables. The reason he does that is very straight forward - to save money. Now that I'm paying to do the marketing every weekend, I do know that it doesn't only save money, but it also saves the time spent to go and buy in the market - not forgetting that you can always get the freshest vegetable just at your home. :)

That's me in my dad's straw hat cutting some vege for Eunice's porridge

My dad's little farm

Kangkung, spring onions, and some other vege that I don't know what their names are :P

Close shot of some new baby vegetables

We even have dragon fruit trees in my house! :D... And it's the one with the red flesh. During our home trip there weren't any fruit but when my mum visited me few times in Penang, she used to bring some over for me and wow, they are sooooooo sweet! In Penang, sometimes I pay nearly RM3.50 for 1 red flesh dragon fruit, no guarantee that it's sweet. :). And we also have papaya trees. We had papaya trees since I was young. My dad always says papaya are the cheapest fruits to feed a family of 6! :)

The dragon fruit trees

Papaya trees

When we had our wedding in Miri, EG was having some kind of "cultural shock" to see how we, foochow (or hock chew), celebrate a festive day.

First, we won't run away from our famous Sarawak mee suah. This mee suah is different from those that we buy in the market from Peninsula. EG said it's nice and he has never tasted them elsewhere. It's salty, and very thin and soft. I recently got some mee suah from Setiawan from a friend. I'll see if it's the same as ours in Sarawak.

The mee sua

I told EG, I had eggs for breakfast since I'm primary 1 to form 5, almost everyday, except weekends. We'll either have hard boiled eggs, soft boiled eggs, or fried eggs with baked beans. Funny thing is, we never complaint. Maybe because all of us love eggs. And probably that explains why all of us get good results in our exams - eggs are full of natural DHA mar... :P. Anyway, hard boiled eggs are also another must have to eat together with mee sua during a celebration in my hometown.

Hard boiled eggs

Tang Yuen, made of glutinous rice flour, will also be served - but this one is mainly during wedding. I remember my aunty made me and EG to feed each other the tang yuen to signify that we'll be in love forever. :). One thing special for this is that in Miri, or at least in my home, we only have the dry ones - which is coated with crushed peanuts or beans. This round, my auntie made it with pumpkin to add more flavor to it. Actually, I only eaten tang yuen in syrup when my best friend brought some for me during uni time. :P

The yummy tang yuen

The Foo chow red wine chicken soup is definitely a no miss when we go back to Miri. We'll eat this with mee sua together. We'll be served this the day we reach home, and the day we leave home before going to airport. We'll also eat this during birthday, baby fullmoon, or any celebration. It has been the tradition all the while since I was young. This is a very simple dish cooked with chicken, ginger mushroom, and the Foo Chow home made red wine, but for me, I taste really good. I tried to cook it here using the same recipe but it doesn't turn out as nice as my mum's. I checked it through this round and finally concluded that it's the type of chicken that we use. I have to find the special chicken "species" in a bigger market. :)

The boiling chicken soup

And this, is how the mee sua be served to all the guests. A piece of meat with a mushroom, and mee sua. :)

The famous Foo Chow Mee Sua

Sometimes I feel sad that I can't speak Foo Chow anymore since I have not been speaking it after I left home. Even at home, I was speaking the very basic ones with my grandma before she passed away. So, I don't think Eunice will ever learn Foo Chow. But I do hope that I'll continue to let her eat all these traditional Foo Chow food since she's half a Foo Chow now. And I hope she'll appreciate the culture like how I do. :)

Logo's Hope Floating Bookfair

2011-09-17T14:13:00.005+08:00

EG's parents came Penang during 1 Malaysia holiday. So, we went to the floating bookfair - Logos Hope that docks in Penang since 25th Aug till 18th Sep.

The ship

Logos Hope

Logo's Hope is the biggest floating bookfair in the world that travels around the world. I have been wanting to visit so we took the opportunity to bring my in laws there together on the holiday.

It was a public holiday but I was hoping the crowd will not be too many. I heard my friend actually queued for 40 minutes to get up to the ship. Thank God when we went, the queue wasn't long - actually there were no queuel. :). The entrance fee is only RM1 per adult, and free for children less than 12 yrs old.

Going into Logos Hope

Though there's no queue, still there're quite a lot of people

Once we went into the ship, there'll be a 2 minutes video to give a short introduction of Logos Hope.

The little girl was also attracted to the video

The mission of Logos Hope

There are quite a lot of books in the bookfair priced from RM8 to RM80. They have a very unique pricing - the books are priced in Units. Every 100 units = RM8. Hence, you'll see books tagged at 100 units, or 300 units. The reason is very obvious - they are travelling around the world, so they just need to change the conversion to the local currency of the countries that they stop. Brilliant idea, I thought. :)

Though there were no queue at the ticket counter, but there are many people browsing the books. That explains why I don't have pictures in the ship. I had to carry Eunice with one hand(worrying that ppl will bang into her), and look for my books with the other hand, while EG looking around for his parents. There's no signal in the ship so we couldn't call. I let Eunice walk at the less crowded place sometimes but still I need to watch over her.

We did not stay long in the ship as the crowd got more and more and we started to feel warm, plus Eunice is showing sleepy sign (yawning). So we decided to pay and get off.

Pose again while on the way back

While doing my payment, I asked the cashier if there are so many ppl everyday. She told me that they haven't had so many visitors for long until today - must be because of the public holiday.

I like the children books on the ship. There are many Christian books and I feel that they are very reasonably priced. I got 2 books for Eunice that is 100 units each (RM8), and EG got a story Bible for Eunice @ 200 units (RM16). I thought they were really not expensive.

For myself, I got a recipe book (to cook for Eunice) and a small baking book at 300 units each. My mum in law got some books too.

Our books from Logos Hope

For EG and my father in law who read a lot, they thinks the books in the bookfair are just so-so, they actually didn't get anything. But I thought it was a very good experience to visit a book fair in the ship, and I won't mind going again. :)

Wei's Wedding

2011-09-01T11:27:00.002+08:00

We were away to my hometown for my brother's wedding. I remember during my wedding, we had some trouble looking for photographers in Miri. We got my brother's friend to help us but they came out so-so.

But recently, many photographers bloomed in Miri. I am very impressed by the SDE (Same Day Edit) done by my brother's photographers - who are also my sister's friends. The song is not exactly to my liking but my brother and sis-in-law like it.

But for the videographer, hmm, LOTS of room for improvement still. :)

Lung Wei + Siew Siew SDE from Ruidi Photography on Vimeo.

New Kitchen Gadget

2011-08-13T20:20:00.004+08:00

I have been cooking dinner after work since few months back. And I need to work very fast in order to clean up everything by 8pm so that I won't be too tired. I have been telling EG about getting a steamer so that I can steam and cook at the same time.

Though we have a normal pot that can do steaming, but somehow, the water always get collected on the dish and it became not so nice. If I use my wok to do the steaming, it'll be nicer but that means I need to wait for the steaming to be done before I can cook other stuff.

I wanted to get an electric steamer, but my husband is really an old fashion guy though he might not look like one. He prefers the conventional steamer. So, on Friday, we went to this shop that sells kitchen stuff at Bayan Lepas, and got our steamer.

My new steamer - It can go up to 3 tiers. :)

I tried using it today to do the steam pumpkin muffins. The steamer works fine and I really like it (so as EG though he's not the one using it... :P). And look at my muffins. :). They don't look as nice as the recipe links and they tasted a bit hard. However, my cutie pie Eunice loves it very much. She ate 2 straight after the muffins are cooled down.

Steam pumpkin muffins

I purposely did these muffins for Eunice's snack over the weekend. So, it's done by using some organic unbleached flour, organic molasses & organic pumpkin. No I didn't do it purposely, just so happen that I bought them few months back so I need to use them before they are expired. Not sure if it's because of the flour that the muffins didn't crack as nice as it's shown in the recipe. :P

Anyway, I'm still not good in baking. My muffins always turn out hard, or the cake turn out a bit wet. Though it's still edible, and sometimes EG said it's nice and I can see Eunice enjoy eating it a lot, but I still think there's a lot of rooms for improvement - though I seriously think I have no talent in baking. :P

New T-Shirt

2011-07-31T21:26:00.004+08:00

Aiyo, I just noticed I haven't been blogging for a month... Geezzz....!

Anyway, EG bought me a t-shirt today from Parkson, 1st Avenue. Nice? He wanted to buy this for me when he brought his parents there few months ago and when they were buying some dresses for Eunice.

He told me the Ben 10 t-shirt was very cute. And he insisted to buy for me.

OK loh. So, nice or not?

See the tag - it's for kids @ 10 yrs old.

OK he's happier than me, and he couldn't wait to wash it so that I can wear it soon. I thought it looks like a boy shirt, but he said it's unisex. OK loh....

Later he added:"But if you wear this to church and 'zhong sam' with Chris on Sunday then I dunno har... I saw him wearing Ben 10 t-shirt before...."

Note: Chris is our worship pastor's son, 7 yrs old or 8 yrs old maybe? @.@

Drawing

2011-06-13T21:51:00.003+08:00

Being parents is always challenging. You'll need to know how to sing, how to play hide & seek, how to entertain a small kid, and now, we have to know how to draw too!

I never like drawing... I don't think EG is the artistic kind of person too (except he's more into music, not art :P). But for our little one, we HAVE TO draw.

My 2-legged elephant

EG's evil rabbit

Ahhh... Failure! :D

Easiyo Yogurt Maker

2011-05-21T17:10:00.008+08:00

I'm not exactly a yogurt lover, but while reading up on what food to give to a baby / toddler, yogurt always is mentioned as one of the good snack for small children.

I tried buying the yogurt from the supermarket and gave to Eunice. She eats them. But I don't really fancy them - 1) it's sweet for me 2) they are all low fat! They said babies need all the fats to grow. I never notice that most yogurt from supermarket on the shelves are either low fat or zero fat, until now. :P

I saw this Easiyo yogurt maker in an organic shop. I read up about it, asked around friends who used it, and all of them are giving very positive feedback on the yogurt maker. So I finally decided to get it. :)

Easiyo also has their own yogurt powder, which came with different delicious flavor. I just need to mix the powder with room temperature water in the Easiyo container, pour the hot boiling water into the maker and put the Easiyo container in, close the lid of the maker and leave it for 8-12 hours (I normally do it before bed time, and leave it overnight.). The next morning, I'll take it out and put it into the fridge. When I'm back from work, I have 1KG of fresh yogurt waiting for me! So easy!! :)

So far I have tried Apricot and Forest Fruits flavor, and they are just very nice! Eunice loves it very much. I have been giving it to her as snack after she's back from babysitter, or during weekend for breakfast. It's very filling and she can finish a bowl of it all by herself.

Both EG and I bought this for our mothers as Mother's Day present. My mum has used it to make 3 times already since there're more people in my house in hometown and they can finish it faster. And they love it so much. :)

This is definitely a highly recommended products for a family. :)

The yogurt powder mix

The yogurt mixture

Closed up - Benefits of Easiyo yogurt

The maker sitting on my kitchen counter overnight

The end product out from fridge (pic taken late, already eaten few times by Eunice :D)

The fresh home made yogurt! Yums!!

Satisfaction

2011-05-01T17:05:00.002+08:00

Satisfaction.....

Mopping the whole house in an hour+!

Result....

Clean & fresh house, and a happy hubby!

Reward......

Free Seafood dinner

Kukukuku! :P

Advert

2011-04-30T23:25:00.003+08:00

Saw this advertisement board last week, it says "1 mangkuk Nestle Koko Krunch dengan Susu = Protein sebiji Telur."

I thought something is not right. And true enough, EG's first reaction was: "Like that I eat egg mar better, cheaper some more!"

:P

New Toy

2011-04-29T21:38:00.007+08:00

Gee... work has been SO BUSY that I couldn't even find some time to blog in my personal blog, though I have so many things to blog about! Being a mummy now makes life even busier!

EG and I have been thinking about upgrading our old panasonic lumix camera since last year. But we couldn't find any camera that we like. Either we don't want to pay so much for a compact camera, or we just couldn't afford a good DSLR, or couldn't find a justification on why we should spend so much on a DSLR that we might not use in the end.

And here comes Canon 550D. My friend used it to shoot Eunice first birthday party video and we thought 1) it's not THAT heavy 2) it's not THAT expensive too. But we still waited for a while, till Canon lauched 600D, and 550D price dropped RM500! And we went and get it! :P

For me, I just snap with the default setting. But EG will play with the settings (so much so for an engineer :P). And he has been busy experimenting with different settings on the cameras which doesn't really interest me. :P... That just shows that I'm definitely not a camera person. But I love this new toy, I could take really nice pictures on my active girl now. :). And the best thing is, I can use it to take videos too! :D

Some of my first experience with my first DSLR with my pretty girl at home:

Magnolia

2011-03-28T22:13:00.008+08:00

My husband has a very special taste in movies. He collects DVDs, and most of his DVDs are the movies which are not shown in the cinema. It's one of his hobbies to collect good movies, according to him. However, I'm not interested in most of his movies because they are mostly mafia shows, some war shows, or some i-dont-know what show also. It's always violent, and saddening, though he said some of them are real life stories. But one thing I'm sure that these shows will never go up to the cinema because if it ever does, I think half of the movie will be muted, as most of the movies are full of foul languages. :P.

Few nights ago, after my Eunice fell asleep, as I came downstair, I saw EG watching one of his weirdo shows. Since I didn't feel like sleeping yet, I sat down and watched together. And I got hooked! The show talks about coincidence. There're many things going on with different people in the show in 24 hours, and in the end it shows how all these people are related to each other.

We used 2 nights to finish the show (it's 2 hours+ long), and after I finished the show, EG was laughing at me (as this is one of the rare times when I sat down and watched his show), and asked if the show is nice. My answer to him is: If anyone asked me what is this show about, I wouldn't know how to answer! There's no story line or drama going on. It's just some life stories of a few people in a city. Or like wikipedia says: Magnolia is an epic mosaic of several interrelated characters in search of happiness, forgiveness and meaning in the San Fernando Valley.

No doubt, it's very mind throbbing. It makes me think a lot. Even until now I still don't understand some parts of the movie (though I have been reading the synopsis in wiki over and over again). But one thing I learnt in the movie is, there's something called Raining Animals. And in this show, it was raining frogs! Ewwwww.... it was really really gross.....!

I have to agree with EG that it's not a bad movie really. A very different show with bizzare storyline. Just too many foul languages. That's why we can only watch when Eunice is asleep. :)

Alice in Wonderland

2011-03-18T14:30:00.003+08:00

I have never gone into the cinema ever since I became a mother. During weekend, I'll be so busy taking care of a child and sitting down quietly to watch a movie is a luxury. I have not been watching a show quietly from start till end for a long time until recently.

Ever since Eunice turns 1, I have been trying to sleep train her - sleeping by herself and sleeping through the night. After some time, she's now able to do it. It makes our lives so much easier nowadays. And she sleeps almost the same time everyday - about 9.30pm. After she sleeps, she'll sleep well (unlike when she was younger - when she'll suddenly wake up to cry) until the next morning. :)

It's now that both me and EG can sit down quietly to watch a show. I watched Alice in Wonderland when EG on it last few days. And he's been very kind by bringing Eunice up to our room and help sleeping her so that I can continue watching the show downstair.

I like the show. Maybe it's a girl show but I really like it. I couldn't take my eyes away from the TV screen. I told EG I'll watch it again on one of the tiring weekends with Eunice. I really like this show. :). I think it'd be even nicer if we can watch it in cinema but it's OK. The DVD that EG got is of good quality and it's nice showing on our 50" plasma. I will watch it again this weekend. :)

Bear & Cat Talk

2011-03-15T22:20:00.004+08:00

Bear: Eh Cat, when is the last day for us to submit our tax filing thingy?
Cat: I think it's 31st of April.
Bear: .... ?! Cat, I give you another chance to tell your answer again. When is the last day?
Cat: I don't know, I think it's 31st of April. No meh?

Bear: ...........................

Cat: Oh, 30th of April. There's no 31st in April hor?

Bear: ...............................

*It has been a while since we do our stupid talk. I hope I'll have more to write about. :)

人生就是一个。。过程。。。

2011-03-03T14:33:00.002+08:00

最近的我，对人生有很多的感叹。。往往发现，生命中有很多事情不是自己能控制或安排得到的。。
朋友在面子书上share了这个短片。。觉得很有意思。。

Life, is just a process.

My meals

2011-01-05T12:54:00.004+08:00

My meals yesterday:

Breakfast @ 7.45am
1) Kuey Teow Soup with minced pork & egg @ Sg Nibong Kopitiam

Late Lunch @ 1pm (hence was extremely hungry)
1) Mc Chicken set (Burger + coke + french fries)
2) Donuts x 2
3) Cheese bun

Dinner @ 6.45pm
1) Mee Suah Tow @ Red Chopsticks

Supper @ 10.30pm
1) A piece of butter cake
2) Homemade Ribena Cheesecake (about size of 15cm x 10cm)
3) 2 hard boiled eggs

The best thing is the comment from my colleague this morning
"Hey, did you lose weight again? Your face looks sharp & thin. Did you weigh yourself recently?"

Ya. It's crazy. I know. :P

Hi 2011

2011-01-04T23:07:00.004+08:00

A friend of mine delivered a baby after Christmas, and on the first day on 2011, the baby passed away due to heart failure. When I received the sms, I didn't know what to say or how I should feel.

I'm a mother now. I can feel the pain for my friend. I couldn't imagine how she'd feel. I couldn't imagine how she felt when she held her baby for the last few moments. It's just so disheartening. Everytime when I tell him EG the bit and pieces of what my friend has gone through, my tears roll down uncontrollably.

This is how I started my 2011 new year. There isn't much excitement, only sadness.

When we went for the prayer meet on Sunday, Pastor mentioned that if we have doubt or fear in entering the new year, let's all submit to God. Even if we have uncertainties in front of us, let's just trust in God. Things are not in our control, let's just depend on our Mighty God.

I have learnt that life is fragile, life is short and life is full of uncertainties, so love yourself, and people around you. Treat them good, treat them well, and treasure the relationship. As we grow older, we see many unfortunate things around us. We'll still grow, life goes on. And we'll support and help each other - regardless of our differences.

But for those who hope in the Lord

will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles;

they will run and not go weary,

they will walk and not be faint.

Isaiah 40:31

So, Hi 2011. Bring it ON!

Stress

2010-12-14T21:17:00.007+08:00

Recently, working life is so stressful. Not only I have to deal with work, but also have to deal with difficult people. Standard working life in a MNC I guess.

I have been trying so hard to release stress. Being a very kiam siap person, shopping therapy won't work on me (I tried!). It makes me more stressful because looking at the low liquidity in the bank makes me feel that I need to work more to get more moolah. Doh....

Before I have Eunice, I'll go for facial / my monthly back massage for relaxation. I also used to sleep through the whole weekend or just lie down in front of the TV with my blank mind. To at least "empty" my brain for some moment before stressing myself out with all the work stuff & emails. I even tried to skip meeting for one whole week in my previous company just to "free" myself off all the projects / updates / meetings. All those worked well.

But now, all those are luxuries for me. Even going facial also I need to take time off. During weekend, I'll be busy cooking for Eunice, and feeding her every 3 hourly, not to mention some time spent on expressing breast milk, bathing her, changing her diaper, soothe her when she fuss, sleep her, clean her mess after food, laundry, washing / sterilizing her bottles. Taking a nap is also a luxury now. When she naps, I'll surf my internet, watch some TV, do some housework, cook some dishes.

So, how to I release stress now? I just found a way to release my stress. I EAT! :P.. Since now it doesn't seem that I'm putting on weight even though I'm eating like a cow, I EAT whenever I feel stress. And it also helps to increase my milk supply. One stone two birds.

Today, I had a kuey teow soup for breaskfast, lunch @ Old Town with some BBQ chicken rice + 7 Up float. I came back for a meeting, then got stress out again. And off I went to the cafe and bought a piece of benggali french toast + a piece of butter cake for my tea time. And yong tau fu dinner after 3 hours.

And guess what, I've been doing that for the past few days. When I'm stress out, I find anything that I can eat in my cube, or go cafe and buy all the pastries.

I don't really like to talk about work with EG these days after work as everytime I talk about it, I get really down and by telling him what happened makes me worry sick and get more stress out.

But whenever I pick my cutie pie up from babysitter, her smile will straight away brighten my day. :)

Look at my cutie pie! She just makes me forget every lousy thing that happens in the day, and give me the motivation & courage to face the new challenges each day. :)

To EG: Sorry, you are demoted now. :)

A Good Day Out

2010-12-12T14:45:00.004+08:00

Nowadays, it's a challenge to find time to blog, esp. when I'm terribly busy with office work, sometimes I still need to work before sleep... argh!

Anyway, I wanted to post this blog entry for very long already but didn't get to have the time until now. :)...

On Deepavali weekend, my parents in law came to Penang to visit us and their grand daughter. Going back Taiping is always hard for us so they come and visit. :)... And it was also my father in law's birthday so we have decided to go Gurney for a nice meal, and have some shopping.

They reached Penang around 12pm, and it's just nice as Eunice had her nap & porridge lunch. While we're on the way there, she slept in the car some more so I'm kinda relieved as having enough nap will make sure she's not cranky.

We had our lunch at a restaurant called Xiao Nan Guo. I wanted to try The Loft but it's already gone... Anyway, this restaurant's food is good too. ANd while we're waiting for our meal, I fed Eunice with her snack (banana + avocado) so she continues to be a happy gir. :)

Look at the cheeky girl

Parents in law while waiting for food

The recommended meal - Braised Pork Leg (or it is pork hand?)

The curry is good, stir fried brinjals is good too...

See a familiar duck there? That's Eunice's toy to keep her occupied :P

They always say men have a soft spot for their daughters, so as grandpa i think

After the lunch, we continued to shop in Gurney for another 2 hours. Eunice was an angel that day. No cranky, no crying. She just sat in her stroller and quietly observing around, occasionally make some excited noise when she saw us or when we played with her. We could even go to Cold Storage to do some light grocery shopping!

When we came back, the little girl was already exhausted and fussed a bit in the car but later on dozed off again in her car seat. :)... As long as she sleeps, both her mummy & daddy are happy.

In the end, our damages on that day:

Daddy's new toy from Denki Best

Mummy's new magazines from Popular

And we bought this from Cold Storage.

Pricey, but very nice!

It has been such a long time since we could do shopping with the little one. :). She used to fuss and cry and demand to be held when she's smaller. But now we're very happy that she can stay in her stroller while we do our shopping. Both EG and I really enjoyed the short day out. :)

The story of my first laptop

2010-11-17T14:17:00.005+08:00

I bought a laptop from Dell when I'm moving from KL to Penang in 2005 to archive my work / mp3s / movies / photos. Dell Inspiron. It was my first laptop. I remember my siblings were "wa-wa-wa" over it. During then it was quite a good spec with a good price.

After I started work in Penang end of 2005, Intel gave me a laptop and I seldom use this laptop. And my brother who's studying in Seremban then asked me to let him use it since I don't use it often. So, I did.

After a year or two, my brother upgraded himself and got himself a desktop. And then, my sister who's studying in KL asked for a laptop. So, my brother passed my laptop to her to ease her in doing her uni assignment / keep in touch with friends.

Before my sister left to UK for her final year, she of course didn't wnat to bring my laptop along (after a few year it is a very heavy laptop comparing with all the new ones in the market). She also upgraded herself with a new laptop from Dell and my youngest brother who was doing A-Level at Taylor's college inherited this laptop.

And after my youngest brother finished his pre-u and entering university, again, he didnt want to bring this "antique" with him. So, he bought himself another laptop using the salary that he earned while becoming a temporary teacher during his long break while waiting for uni course to start. And my laptop was passed to my father (!!) =.=.

When I'm pregnant with Eunice, we decided to have my confinement in Taiping. I know I'll be bored to death when EG is back to Penang to work. So I asked my parents to bring my laptop back to me before I delivered Eunice. That's already 5 years later.

During confinement, it has been my greatest companion. I was using it everyday to search everything about babies in google, babycenter, parenthood forum and etc. When I'm back to Penang, it continued to contribute by allowing me going online to chat on my 2nd month of maternity leave. However, after a few years of passing around, my laptop got slower and it's really heavy. In the end, we have decided to buy a new Toshiba for myself.

Actually now that I think about it, thought I have bought this laptop for 5 years, but the total amount of time that I actually use it maybe is 1 year?! Hmmm....

I'd say my first laptop has been very faithful to not only me but my family (hey, it's being passed through all the siblings in my family! :P), and the durability is not a doubt! :)...

To remember my laptop, I took a few pics while transferring my data to the new laptop in the computer shop. We traded it in @ RM100.

The wallpaper

Transferring MP3s

EG asked if I'll miss my laptop. I'm never a heart person so I said no la... :).. Now, my new laptop with webcam allows me to show my mum in Sarawak on Eunice's development and let Eunice talks to her grandma too.

Oh, and this new laptop is EG's gift for me. So, thank you dear! :)

我不要。。

2010-11-08T13:15:00.001+08:00

我不要做工。。。
我不要做工。。。
我不要做工。。。
我不要做工。。。
我不要做工。。。
我不要。。。!!
我不要。。。!!
我不要。。。!!
我不要。。。!!
我不要。。。!!
我不要。。。!!

唉。。。。：~（

Baking & Cooking weekends

2010-09-22T20:53:00.004+08:00

After Eunice comes into my life, cooking daily dinner is kinda impossible as it'll be too rush. So, EG and I have decided that we'll eat out on weekdays, and I'll cook on weekend so that he can enjoy some not so nice homecook food. :P

Recently I joined a Chinese parenting forum and there are mothers sharing their recipes. And their recipes are easy and simple. I tried making curry chicken. It looks so nice in the picture right? It tasted OK but can be improved further coz 1) I didn't have curry leaves 2) I didn't use santan, I used full cream milk (which is supposed to be used for muffins baking :P).. I'm definitely going to try this again...

Next, a mum share this recipe called 京都排骨(Kyoto ribs?). Anyway, the recipe is so simple. I just marinade the ribs with oyster sauce + soy sauce + sugar + five spice powder + corn flour before I went church on Sunday morning. And in the evening, I took them out, wrapped with aluminium foil, and bake at 200 degrees for 40 minutes. Actually it already tasted very nice from oven.

Then, just fry some garlic and mix tomato sauce, black vinegar, sugar, water together, add in the baked ribs and done! Again, it wasn't perfect because 1) too much gravy 2) too much sugar so too sweet 3)am going to add some dried chili next time to add some kick.

But all in all, I think it's not bad laa... at least EG finished everything though he also agrees that both the dishes could be better. :)

And I also baked muffins! I got the recipe from JoyOfBaking.com. It's carrot muffins with no milk / butter - the recipe only calls for corn oil (I used my Natural cooking oil). They are not bad, but taste a bit "raw" so EG didn't really like it. And I brought to office for colleagues to get them finish for me. :P

Sometimes, it's the cooking/baking process that I enjoy the most. It helps me to release my stress after taking care of a super active baby. Sometimes I hope I can take a few days off just to cook / bake at home but that will only happen in my dream... bah.....

对---不---起

2010-09-20T08:59:00.005+08:00

也许自己的 ego 太高。。以前要说对不起三个字，比登天还难。。
可是，现实人生不是只有对或错。。也不是黑和白而已。。还有灰嘞。。

有时，自己没有错，还是得认错。。。
尤其是 senior/“长辈” 数说你有多不对时，真的懒得为自己辩护。。
反正大家都认为你年轻，一定是你错的啦。。。别人都做了这么多年。。不可能会出错的啦。。人家吃盐多过你吃饭嘞。。

再辩护下去，大家都觉得你好固执。。怎么现在的年轻人那么难教。。虽然我就只比你们年轻7-8年。。

古人说：忍一时风平浪静。。退一步海阔天空。。

So,

对不起咯。。是我的错！
虽然我还是觉得我是无辜的。。

Eneloop Rechargeable Batteries

2010-09-09T21:12:00.006+08:00

I have not been blogging. Not because I'm lazy but I'm just so tied up at work. Having the long Raya holiday is a relief for me, but also adding stress to me as I have deadlines to meet in office. :(... I foresee I'll need to work from home but well, I'm going to take it easy and still enjoy my long weekend. :)

I think I'm blessed to marry EG. He's a very homey guy and he does a lot of house chores better than me. Besides, he also always makes sure things in the house are working fine - like the lights, gate, switches, remote controls, etc.

One thing that he will always stock up at home is batteries. We need quite a lot of batteries in our daily lives for remote controls, torch lights, etc. And recently we bought toys for Eunice. These days, toys come with music and light - means batteries again. So he suggested that we get rechargable batteries for cost saving as well as to save the environment (btw - Jusco Penang has recycle bin for batteries).

After surfing the net and getting some information, he found this Sanyo Eneloop rechargeable batteries, and he got his friend to bring it back from US (50% cheaper than buying in Malaysia).

He also bought extra batteries so that we will always have enough for different appliances at home. If I remember correctly, EG said the batteries can be re-charged up to 1000 times. So far we're using them for Eunice's toys. They are working just great and at least now we don't need to always buy batteries.

To EG: Good job! :)

Parents in town

2010-08-26T13:24:00.013+08:00

My sister had her 2nd convocation in KL last weekend. So, since my parents are attending her convocation in KL, they took the opportunity to come Penang to visit their precious granddaughter. The last time they came was when Eunice was only 7 weeks old. And now, she's 6 months old already! :)

To think about it, my parents + my sister are so bravo in planning their trip (as usual). They left my hometown Miri @ 6am+ and reached KL @ 8am. Went straight from Airport to IMU Sri Petaling to attend my sister's convocation @ 9am+. After that, they went Sunway to meet up with youngest brother, and took 5.30pm Aeroline up to Penang. And such, they saved hotel in KL on Saturday.

They spent a day in Penang on Sunday, and left to KL the next day (Monday) using Aeroline again @10.30am, and left back to Miri on the same day @ 8.30pm flight. Sound tiring isn't it? In less than 24 hours, they travelled 1368.55km (Miri - KL) + 369km (KL - PG) = 1737.55km! Recently they have been traveling quite a lot, so I guess this is not as tiring as when they went for back-packing in Taiwan with my brother early this year. :)

Eunice wasn't feeling very well on Saturday, so when my mum reached my house at 10pm+, and when she woke up from her sleep, my mum tried carrying her. As usual, she examined the "stranger" for very long, but this time, she started crying... So we decided to only re-introduce her to her grandparents the next day. My mum was extra delightful to see Eunice. She couldn't stop playing & carrying her. My sister snapped a few pictures and when I went through the pictures, I noticed my mum has been carrying her almost all the time. :)...

Eunice & Grandma

Eunice & Grandpa

Grandma couldn't put Eunice down and she was so comfortable that she actually fell sleep in her arms....

Another proof that Grandma couldn't put chubby Eunice down

Grandma playing with Eunice on her playmat

with Grandma again

My dad's birthday was coming up so we celebrated his birthday during the weekend since we won't be able to go back Miri in September. His first birthday with his granddaughter. He was pleasantly surprise by the birthday celebration. He first thought we want to celebrate Eunice's birthday when he only saw 1 candle on the cake, and commented that it's still 6 more months to go.... :P

See, Grandma is holding Eunice again! :)

The happy grandparents with their first granddaughter

Dad was shy so he got Eunice to cut the cake together... kekeke :P

Sometimes I feel sad that my parents can't spend much time with their grandchild. And even sadder when the thought that Eunice will know recognize them as her grandparents since she won't see them often. But in Babycenter, it mentioned that we can develop grandparents' pictures and put in the house, and show the baby so that they remember the face.

So, I'm going to do that! Kekeke... Hopefully when Eunice goes back Miri for CNY next year, she'll still recognize her grandparents. :)

Another Experience With Blue Reef

2010-08-02T21:55:00.002+08:00

Ever since we visited Blue Reef for our 1st year anniversary, EG doesn't eat anymore fish and chip elsewhere. Many times, we drove all the way from Bayan Lepas to Tanjung Bungah just to eat his favorite fish & chips, and my favorite pan seared salmon. Even Eunice has visited the place 3 times. :)

Last month, we attended a friend's wedding ceremony @ Paradise Sandy Beach hotel. On our way back, we wanted to dine in @ Blue Reef but later thought it might not be a good idea as the dinner might run late and Eunice will be fussing - and both of us might not be able to enjoy our meals. So, we have decided to pack it.

We smsed Blue Reef's owner on our way there (we didn't have the shop phone number then), and ordered two sets of fish & chips. When we reached, EG went down to collect the food while I was in the car entertaining my little cutie pie.

After 15 minutes, EG got back into the car and told me he's really happy with Blue Reef's service. There isn't any extra charge for packing. And to our surprise, Blue Reef's owner (whom we smsed to) wasn't in the shop but she has already called in to place our order! I'm impressed. Besides, EG told me while he's waiting, he thought if anyone will offer him a drink, and true enough, the always friendly waiter gave him a chilled water. He was very impressed.

The food was nicely packed. And of course, we enjoyed our dinner together with our little one at home. We'll still rate Blue Reef as one of our favorite restaurants, and it's definitely worth it for us to travel the distance just to enjoy their food. :)

The nicely packed greens

The greens, my favorite tartar sauce (yuummsss) & vinegerette

Our dinner in the paper bag

Yumssss

8th Year Anniversary

2010-07-22T10:24:00.004+08:00

Today is my 8th year anniversary
- not wedding anniversary
- not knowing-EG anniversary
- not first-kiss anniversary or what-so-ever..

Today @ 8 years ago, I started my first job in IBM Plaza, TTDI as a software engineer, and that's when I fell in love with SQL databases. During then, I was still fresh, young, pretty and full of energy. And during then, I enjoyed the attentions from other guys who are trying to know me better (ooppsss... shy :P), enjoyed the challenges / jobs given, and definitely enjoyed the traveling every month.

8 years later, I have moved from KL to Penang, changed to my 4th job, changed my role from a young lady to a wife & mummy. Mindset changed. Paradigm shifted. Many things have changed in these 8 years but I thank God that I'm very much blessed with good jobs, good companies and most importantly - good friends & colleagues throughout my career life.

How time flies. I've been working for 8 years already.

Maybe I should reward myself with something... Hmm... **thinking hard** :D

Our Weekend

2010-06-30T22:25:00.006+08:00

EG and I can stay at home for the whole weekend, only go church on Sunday. Even our neighbor came by and commented that we have good "family time"... Hmm... To be honest, sometimes I feel that we're busier on weekend than on weekdays as weekend is the only time when you can do all your housework that you can't do on weekdays, and it's also the only time when we can cook slowly in the kitchen as there's no rush going to fetch Eunice from babysitter, or getting ready to sleep her.

So, if you wonder, what do we eat during weekends?

I made pancakes.

EG thinks the pancakes are much nicer compare to my previous attempt

EG made bolognese spaghetti (he's getting very good in this esp. ever since he got his balsamic vinegar :P). We could eat this for few meals. :P

Our 2 lunches over the weekend :P

Another quick meal by EG. Simple but filling. Best thing is it doesn't dirty the kitchen.

Friday Night Dinner

Clockwise: Adventist 7-Grain bread with olive oil & balsamic vinegar, pan fried HOG sausages, Salad with cherry tomatoes, tomatoes, celery, apples, and home made dressing, scrambled eggs

Attended a friend's wedding ceremony on Saturday evening (didn't stay for dinner as we think Eunice is still too young to go out for too long :P), and tapao Blue Reef on the way back. (Will blog about this separately).

Saturday night dinner - Blue Reef

A typical chinese dish by me - a-supposed-to-be-hong-xiu-pork-rib-but-turned-out-dunno-what-pork-rib, & stir fry vege.

Sunday Night dinner

I made jelly too... :)Konyakku Lychee Jelly

Then, there are so much housework to do. The for-sure things that we do every weekend is our laundry. We need to wash at least 3 batches - Eunice's clothes with her baby detergent, our clothes, and the inner wear. Throwing them into washing machine, hang, took in at the end of the day, fold, sort. I also wash Eunice's cloth diapers since she'll be on full cloth diapers at home during weekends and she'll used easily 5-6 pcs per day.

Our laundry

And EG will be washing car, vacuuming the house, mopping, washing toilets, washing car porch, etc etc.

Not to mention we also need to take out time to feed Eunice, sleep Eunice, play with her, change her diapers, etc etc.

EG sleeping his precious

So, don't you think our weekends are really very busy? :)

HOG in Penang!

2010-06-20T17:16:00.005+08:00

Recently, EG is kinda falling in love with cooking. But he only likes to cook Italian food which is his favorite. He has been searching online recipes up and down to make his bolognese spaghetti better. He also tried to make Aglio Olio - which is a quick and easy meal.

He was looking at some sausages @ Jusco the other day and told me seriously that he really needed some sausages from HOG (which i blogged previously) as we know those selling @ departmental stall are processed one, unlike HOG's which uses fresh & non artificial ingredients.

After checking with YY (the HOG's boss :P), finally we had a friend came up Penang from KL and she is kind enough to bring up nearly 5 dozens of sausages for us (not all for EG and me la... ours is only 2 dozens, the rest are friends' orders). And we have been cooking them quite often esp. when I have no time to cook. It's very easy & quick to prepare a meal with HOG's sausages. :D

So, now, pictures of some of our dinners.

Pan Fried HOG sausages with homemade salad & mashed potatoes

Pasta with HOG sausages and fresh herb

Well, HOG's sausages are full of meat! EG and I can take 2 sausages each and it's really very very filling. To be healthier, EG cut up some of the food / fruits that he can find in the fridge and make some salad as our vegetables. I'm amazed that he's seriously very creative. And the salad tasted very good as both of us prefer the cruncy type of salad. :D

Homemade salad with apples & celeries & tomatoes & olive oil & herbs

In our most recent "shipment" to Penang (yeah, 2nd shipment :P), we got some burger patties from HOG. And EG and I decided to make a quick dinner on last Friday before we left to Taiping for the weekend.

When EG is pan frying the burget patties in the kitchen while me settling down Eunice, I can already smell the great aroma from the patties. Yuummsss... And we fried extra eggs to go with our burger - with bread. :P... Oh it's so good as the burger is full of flavor.

Our burger with HOG's burger patty

A closer look - looko at the juicy meeeeaaatttt... yumm...

Now, we're going to wait and see who else is coming to Penang from KL. And HOG will get them to bring more sausages / burger patties up for us...! Yeahh...! I wonder if we could actually transport the roasted pork as well. Hmm... I shall leave it to the guys to think how to do that. :D

Btw, if anyone from Penang is interested with HOG sausages / burger / meatballs, do drop me a note so that i'll let u know when we're collecting orders for the next shipment to Penang. :)

New motivation!

2010-06-18T16:49:00.004+08:00

OK.

I admit that my blog is getting more and more boring, and more and more "dead" with nothing much interesting.

Like EG said, I should try to relax more - ooo-sha ooo-sha - and try not to be so stress out with so many things in life - especially with the little one my cutie pie. :P

OK. I shall re-ignite my blogging motivation and blog about something more interesting soon!

Stay tune!!

ooo-sha ooo-sha!!

Milo Agar Agar

2010-06-12T18:15:00.002+08:00

Made this last 2 weekends. Not bad but I think I put too much milo powder (I love drinking milo with a lot of the Milo powder), so there's a layer of powder accumulated at the bottom of the jelly, and it caused the jelly to be a little bit bitter - just a little bit.

But it's still quite nice to eat. And very esy to make. Can be done in 20 minutes and I can do while Eunice is napping. :)... Will definitely do it again esp. on hot weather like these days.

A Life Lesson

2010-05-27T13:01:00.003+08:00

Someone bang my car.

Yeap. You heard it right.

Someone bang my car.

Of course it's not our fault. It's very obvious that it's not our fault. The lady driver went into our lane and bang right into my car. My poor potato car. Baby Eunice was in the car with us as we're going to bring her for some checkup on her running nose. Thank God EG has already stopped the car, and Eunice's car seat is back facing so there's no impact on her.

EG already saw the blur lady driver. Honked her. Stopped the car. But she still came all the way straight into my car. Signal light broke. Head light broke. Bonnet knocked. Bumper knocked. Driver side door cannot open. Eunice cried after 5 minutes because car didn't move. Took her out from car seat to soothe her. Called babysitter (since near her house) and got her to send Eunice back to her place.

The sotong lady driver lifted her hand to me while I'm holding Eunice in the car - I guess she's trying to apologize. Fine. I wasn't too angry at that time. Most probably she was distracted by her two little daughters in the car. Thank God that the two little girls are not hurt as well.

She told us we'd claim her insurance. OK fine. She told us she can't go and make police report now because she needs to pick up another child. OK fine. She looked rather sincere. Fine. She repeated many many times that we'd claim her insurance. Fine. We went ourselves and did our own report.

During evening, EG called up to check the status. The lady reported police said WE BANG HER CAR! And so now, we can't claim her insurance. EG and I kept calling her. No answer. SMS her. No reply. I was FUMING angry.

I have never felt SO ANGRY for so long!

I was seriously FUMING ANGRY. I hate ppl lying straight into my face. And I hate ppl taking advantage over me esp. when I DID NOTHING WRONG.

I told EG let's go and find the witness and report to police again!
I told EG let's go round the neighborhood to find her and talk to her again!
I told EG what kind of example is she setting to her children?! Lying?! I was just SO ANGRY.

I called my mum. She told me to let go. Told me to thank God that everyone is safe. Told me to pay the repair ourselves since we can afford it. Told me not to curse the lady. Told me God will have His own justice. Told me to submit to God. Told me don't go sleep with anger.

EG talked to one of his friends in church. He was told the same thing. Let go - it's a fallen world. The thing that encourages us the most is what he said - Don't get discouraged of what others have cheated on you, because our God is resourceful. How much can the others take from you?... It's really encouraging.

So we prayed not to let this affect us. We want to apply what Bible teaches us in this situation. Not easy though.

We got someone to assess the damage, and paid 1k+ for the repair.

Well, I thank God:

Everyone is safe.
Eunice wasn't shocked. Thank God for car seat! And after she went back to bbsitter, she continue to sleep and drink like usual. And at night, she still slept well.
For family and friend who advise & encourage us. For friend who recommend a good contact for car repair.
I really thank God that both EG and I have income. We can afford the repair. Though we're not supposed to pay it anyway.. but it's OK.

So I got my potato car back after a week. We even paid extra to polish it. Now, it looks brand new!

It's a life lesson. We learn through it. Deep inside me, I'm still angry with that liar woman - guess it's not so easy to forgive.

Anyway, for those in Penang, give way when you see Myvi PHY5525 on the road. Blek!

New chef at home!

2010-04-28T13:43:00.004+08:00

I've been so busy with Eunice even if it's weekend. In fact, weekends are busier than weekdays since we have a good babysitter to take care of Eunice during weekdays and we can have time to do some things by our own. But during weekends, I need to do from A to Z to make her the happy baby.

Since I'm rather tied up esp. with feeding, EG has volunteered himself to COOK!. WOW!! I thought I heard it wrong when he first told me.... coz he once told me he really can't cook! Well, guess the new life that came our house in fact changes my dear hubby. :)

Since it's the first time he cooks (except maggi mee or fried eggs lar), he started with his favorite food - Spaghetti Bolognese. He surfed net for a GOOD recipe, and went out to buy the ingredients himself. So excited right? :)

The happy chef

After 30 minutes .... Tadaaaa...!

Bolognese sauce for spag

I must say it's not bad for his first cooking. And of course I helped to do some of the cutting while Eunice is having her nap after feed.

And now the new chef is getting all excited with cooking and planning out his next cook during the weekend... :P

New Role in Life

2010-04-15T08:50:00.003+08:00

Life has been busy ever since I started working after 2 months of my maternity leave.

The schedule is rather standard, and I have to sleep earlier these days as I need to get up earlier to prepare everything.

Now I wake up at 5.30am to express some breastmilk. Wash all parts & sterilise the breastpump. Pack up my breastpump & stuff for expressing in office. Prepare & pack breakfast for EG and myself to eat in office. I need to finish all these by 6am.

Then, go back upstair. Spend some time looking at my little cutie pie sleeping in her cot, and show some disgusted face looking at the other BIG BABY snoring on the bed =.=. Bathe. Change.

6.30am wake the BIG BABY up by calling his full name. Then slowly pick up my little cutie pie and kiss kiss a bit to wake her up to feed her before sending her to babysitter. Cutie pie will finish sucking by 7am (or else I'll break her) and I'll change her cloth & diaper. Bring her downstair to get ready to go babysitter's place.

Latest by 7.30am we have to leave the house since I can't reach office too late.

Work from 8am to 5pm+. Go home to prepare dinner and go pick up little cutie pie again. After dinner it'll be around 8pm+. And since cutie pie has been @ babysitter's place the whole day, we'll normally spend time talking & playing with her. And feed her of course.

10pm I'll bring cutie pie back upstair. Wipe her, feed her and sleep her. And I normally will fall asleep while sleeping her. So cute right? :P. At night cutie pie will wake up normally once for feed.

And the cycle repeats.

No, I'm not too tired. I actually like this kind of life. Being parent is so nice esp. when you see the little one growing everyday. The feeling can't be described with words.

Maybe the only problem I have is - I have 2 babies to take care of. One big and one small. =.=

But the big one can help to do a lot of things. Only problem is - the big one is not a morning person. :P

New Blog

2010-03-16T15:42:00.004+08:00

I have not been updating my blog often. For those who have me in my facebook will know that I'm upgraded to mummy status. Yeah, you heard it right. And yeah, I was so secretive about it. :P

Anyway, life with a baby now is obviously very busy. And the routine for the whole day is all about baby - bathing baby, feeding, burping, changing diaper, sleep baby. With me doing exclusive direct breastfeeding, it makes my life slightly harder because no one can take over the feeding job! And I have to do it myself!

EG has been very supporting and he has been helping to do all the housework when I'm busy feeding / sleeping his precious. Guess now he knows how it feels to prepare dinner every night last time (though he just tapao / heat up / put in plate / feed me sometimes if baby Eunice doesn't give me a break! :P).

If you're interested on how we're doing with parenthood, do check out my new mamabeh blog. :)

My Oven's Story

2010-02-03T21:41:00.003+08:00

When EG and I were planning on our house renovation last year, we have certain expectations on how certain things needed to be done at our new place. For me, I requested for a built-in oven in my kitchen so that I can try with some "funny" recipes, and I got it.

We didn't go for the branded ones (obviously for cost reason) and we chose a local brand called Izoton recommended by our kitchen renovator which has good service and perform equally well with other branded ones.

My oven

After moving in for almost 5 months, I couldn't find a reason or motivation to use the oven. :P... So it has been idling for months until one day, someone asked us to make some roasted potatoes for a pot luck party. So, quickly I took out the oven manual and found out that we need to "clean" the oven before using it.

The smell was bad... it smell like some strong metalic smell and I had to on all the fans in my house and open all the windows for better air ventilation, else I think both EG and I might just be suffocated. :P

Oven cleaning

EG always like to do these stuff. So, to be safe, we started off by trying with a few potatoes first. :P... So, I quartered the potatoes, he put some salt, paprika, olive oil onto the potatoes. We roasted for like 30 minutes maybe? And ta-da, it was not bad. We had it as one of the dishes for lunch. :P

Roasted Potatoes Trial Run :P

So since it's successful, I quartered up the rest of the potatoes. This time, we mixed everything in a bowl with all the ingredients so that they are more evenly coated, and we added black pepper. We poured all of them into the pan and roasted it again.

The real one

The final result was not bad. Though we thought it could be more crispy. After the potoatoes are cooled, they became slightly soggy. But we still received good comments saying they tasted good. Maybe saja-lah friends wanna make us feel better. :P

The end result

After that, I have been trying to use this oven to bake my mum's carrot cakes, baked salmon for our new year dinner, MUFFINS!!! And baking is really fun...! I have been surfing the net for many different recipes and I shall try them with my this lovely oven..! Oh I love my oven now. :)

But before that, I need to stock up my baking tools and baking ingredients... Hopefully my motivation will stay since EG doesn't really fancy cakes / bread / pastry, but he's a huge fan for potatoes. Talking about that, I thought I saw a recipe for home made potato chips too... Hmmm... :P

Muffins Making

2010-02-01T16:43:00.007+08:00

I have always wanted to try to make muffins. The steps look easy but I normally only like to try something that's already being tested - to make sure it's not too sweet and to prevent wastage in case it doesn't work. :D

Yvonne came to our place last weekend and showed me how to make her secret recipe for Banana Choc Muffins. Oh it tasted so good and the steps are so easy. :D... So, since it's a long weekend, I decided to try out the normal Vanilla Choc Chips muffins from some other ppl's blog since I'm lazy to go get the ripe bananas.

I just tried 1 recipe that yields 12 muffins - my muffin cups are tall (actually, i don't even know if they are the real muffin cups :P), else it should yield more than 12.

Baking in process

My cute cute muffins

Close up of the muffin with lots of choc chips :P

EG loves it! =) But he didn't know that the muffin cups can be reused and he spoilt one of them...! =.=

Wasted one muffin cup

I'll definitely try this recipe again next time..!

Bear & Cat Talk

2010-01-10T07:40:00.009+08:00

Bear asked Cat to buy back a loaf of bread when Cat went out. When Cat came back, Cat stepped out of the car happily...

Cat: Bear! You wouldn't believe it! Today 7-11 has promotion! You buy 1 loaf of bread, they free you potato chips..!

Bear: ...... (still processing, after 5 seconds) Yeah right!

Cat: Bear, really! Why u don't believe me? (with the famous cheeky grin)

Bear: Because the potato chips cost more than the bread your stupid CAT.... =.=

PS: Potato chips are strictly prohibited in Bear's house, but Cat finished half of them while watching LOTR before sleep. Bad Cat.... Fat Cat!

Dinosaur Eggs

2010-01-05T15:53:00.007+08:00

EG hates lizards very much. He'd chase them around the house to make sure there's no survivor in our house whenever he sees a lizard. I have seen him chasing a poor lizard with the whole bottle of pesticide, spraying at the lizard from the kitchen to the bedroom in our old apartment last time, until the poor little fella got dizzy and fell down. Then, he picked the fella up and threw it down, and make the stupid "Ahhhh..." sound for the lizard while it's falling down. =.=. Now, in our new place where there's more access for lizards to enter, I can hear "bing bang" sound upstair or at some of the house corner, and 80% chances that my dear hubby is trying to murder the lizards.

I always joke to EG that if ever the lizards can talk, they might probably be warning each other not to enter our house as it's a cursed house for lizards. No lizard could survive getting out from our house. And if there's ever lizard survived, they might have a celebration or testimony sharing among all the lizards. Ya, stupid I know. That's how we entertain (or rather irritate) each other everyday. :P

One day, when we went to a friend's house for a birthday celebration, EG shared about his hatred for lizards, and our friend told us to put a top cracked eggs at the entrance of the main door to prevent lizard. We have not heard this before so we asked why, and the answer given was: "Dinosaur's eggs mar, they will scare the lizard off..."

That's really funny! We don't know if it works but we decided to give it a try. So I cracked the eggs differently while trying to prepare a breakfast few weeks ago.

Then, EG left two of them @ the corner of our main door. Funnily, he put the eggs facing down. U think this position will "tell" the lizards that it's dinosaur's eggs? Obviously no right?! =.=. His wisdom was zero that day. :P

So, we changed the position to show the "hole" to the lizards...! :P. "Hey hey lizards, there're dinosaurs coming out from these holes ok.... so go somewhere else and play before you become their meals! And don't poo here!"

Seriously I dunno if it works but recently there's not much lizards in our house... Not sure if it's coincident, or the lizards are really scared off by the Dinosaur's eggs! :P... Anyway, EG put another 3 of them at another corner of the house.

We shall continue to monitor and see if these "dinosaur eggs" really work to scare the lizard off.

:P

New Year Dinner

2010-01-02T10:55:00.004+08:00

I told EG that I want to do something special for our new year dinner - not going out but trying to do bake salmon at home - since we know everywhere might be just jammed and crowded during this long holiday weekend.

We had simple breakfast & lunch at home while cleaning up our place. New Year should start with a clean house i think. :)... Cleaning up house is sometimes fun and have great satisfaction when the house is finally clean and dustless. But of course, it's tiring.

I found the simple recipe for baked salmon online with common ingredients. It only needs minced garlic, lemon, olive oil, parsley (I used dried parsley), dried basil, salt & black pepper.

We got our salmon from Jusco last week. I prepared the marinade, mix everything together, put the salmon in and left it in the fridge for 1 hour. In the meantime, I continued to help EG with the house cleaning task. :P

Marinade the salmon

Then, preheat the oven to 190 degrees and put the salmon + the marinade into aluminium foil. Seal them up and bake for 35-45 minutes. That's all. How easy right? :)... While waiting for the salmon to cook, I continue with the other side dishes - boiled brocolli with garlic powder & oregano, EG's favorite fried potatoes, and some coleslaw since I had some leftover cabbages in the fridge.

And Tada! Here's our new year dinner!

My dinner

EG's dinner with more potatoes

Oh the dinner was so filling. We were overly stuffed. But it tasted good! Yummy! :).. After dinner, we continued with the cleaning upstair and we completed everything around 10pm+. It felt so good with great satisfaction when we see the house is now clean and dustless! And by 11.20pm, both of us were soundly asleep after a whole day of exercising & cleaning. :)

What a good start of the first day of the year! :)

And today, my dear hubby is going to grant me a holiday by no cooking and bringing me out for meals. Yay! =)

Happy 2010

2009-12-31T14:39:00.002+08:00

Another year is going to be over soon! I couldn't believe that time actually flies that fast. 2010 seemed so faraway when I was in University but now even our Wawasan 2020 feels so near... *scary*. :)

Few days ago it was raining at night, and EG was standing at the car porch, crossing his arms, watching the rain. I asked him what he's doing and he said it's comfortable to watch the rain & enjoy the breeze. And it just remind me of my dad. He's behaving exactly like an old uncle reminiscing his old times. Even he himself thought the same!

OK joke aside.

2009 has been a real busy year for me, but it was a good year. EG always says I'm a very simple and easily satisfied (and very low maintenance too) wifey and I thought there's nothing wrong with that. I just tend to thank God for everything that happens in our lives, looking at the brighter side and make ourselves feeling more contented & happier. Being happy is the most important thing in life - at least that's for me.

I read through my thanksgiving blog entries for the past few years and I never fail to thank God for His wonderful plans for me and EG all these while. I'm just very thankful that we're blessed with our smooth sailing life and with many things that we wanted in our lives. Anyway, the most important thing for us is to have each other side by side, and together with God, we have no fear to face any challenge in life. :)

God placed Jeremiah 29:11 in my heart this year and I truly believe that He has been blessing us MUCH with great plans this year. And for the coming year, the verse that I have in my heart is Matthew 7:7-8 - Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

I'm getting old so I'm not going to brag what my achievements are for 2009 and what's my new plan next year but 2010 definitely marks a NEW YEAR for both me and EG, and I'm sure we're going to enjoy it to the fullest together like many previous years that we have been.

Finally, HAPPY NEW YEAR to all my friends! And may all of you stay happy & healthy all the time! =)

Happy Birthday to Me =)

2009-12-29T20:28:00.006+08:00

EG asked me how I'd want to celebrate my birthday this year. And as usual, I told him no need. =)

My mum used to cook some nice food on each of our birthday - like our favorite fried chicken wings, or fried golden boiled eggs. And when my dad saw it, he'll ask why the special food and normally make this funny comment:"Everyone also has birthday, so what so special about yours?" :P... I thought it's quite funny.

This year, I told EG I wanted a quiet birthday. Just two of us - as usual. We again went to Blue Reef for a nice dinner, ordering the same food :P. And before we went back Taiping for the long weekend, we got two small slices of cakes from Secret Recipe. EG sang me a birthday song, gave me a kiss on the cheek (and gave another kiss on my tummy :P). Then we had the cakes while watching the Lord of the Rings in TV8 (with no ending =.=).

My 1st birthday cakes

EG asked his parents to order my favorite pandan layer cake. But I insisted that there's no birthday song or cake cutting ceremony.. I shy... :).. So i just cut the cake and whacked half of it... Yummy! :)

My 2nd birthday cake

This is my last birthday with starting with number 2. I don't feel anything special, but just feel that time really flies. And as usual, I just feel happy and contented with my life. For me, that's the most important thing of all. :)

Happy Birthday, Penguin~!

Healthy Carrot Cake

2009-12-10T22:30:00.006+08:00

My interest for baking suddenly increased during the last few months when I found that baking is actually not hard - provided you get the amount of the ingredients right! All you need to do is mainly mixing everything and bake them. The only hard thing is the washing part... argghh....

I tried to do this cake last month using the baking instead of the steam method, and it turned out not bad! I didn't blog about it as the steps are very simple and you can just follow the steps in the website. Anyway, the successful attempt definitely gave me a strong motivation to try baking again using my oh-so-lovely oven!

My mum taught me a healthy carrot cake recipe when I went back to Miri during CNY early this year. I thought since my sister who NEVER cooks can also make it successfully by her own, it shouldn't be too hard for me.. :P

Below is my mum's recipe (don't know where she got it from):

Ingredients:

Wholemeal mix flour - 200gm

Baking powder - 2 teaspoon

Bicarbonate of soda - 2 teaspoon

Brown sugar - 120gm (we reduced to 80gm as we don't like it to be too sweet)

Eggs - 2 nos

Natural Oil - 10 tablespoon

Carrot - 250gm - 300gm

Orange - 1/2 no

Raisins - 80g (optional)

Steps:
1. Beat brown sugar, oil, eggs together with a wooden spoon.

2. Add wholemeal flour + baking powder + bicarbonate soda (sieved), carrot (grated - this is the hard one), raisin. Stir evenly.

3. Bake at 170 degrees for 50 minutes. If the top of the cake is too wet after 50 minutes, bake at 120 degrees / 130 degrees using top fire.

4. After baking, poke the cake with "satay stick" and pour 1/2 no of orange (extract its juice) mix with 1 teaspoon of brown sugar.

Done! Easy right? And it's healthy too!

I tried it tonight. And I made it really healthy by using organic wholemeal flour (actually it's because I can't find the normal wholemeal mix flour :P), and organic raisins (which my mum bought for me but I didn't really like to eat). It didn't turn out as nice as my mum's. I used organic wholemeal flour and I think that's why it's more dry than my mum's. Hers is more moist. But anyway, it's edible. I shall try it again next time to improve it! =)

Note that I doubled the portion to yield the cake of the below size.

My first attempt of healthy carrot cake

The Hungry Hog

2009-12-10T13:13:00.004+08:00

Previously I wrote an entry to promote The Hungry Hog 6 months ago. And now, our dear friend aka the boss has decided to extend his business to 7 days a week! And he also added another item into his Menu aka Homemade Sausages....

Check out the website for more details.

And if you wish to know more about the porkie, or the leng cai boss, you can also check out @ thestartonline.tv. He's kind enough to share the recipe on the yummy roasted pork belly...! And remember to listen to the crispy skin sound when he cut the roasted pork in the end... oh it sound heavenly! =)... And you'll know that you're definitely paying for great stuff! =)

Argh... Too bad he still doesn't send it to Penang... Lucky for those in KL!

Enjoy! =)

A Good Sunday

2009-11-08T17:33:00.002+08:00

A good day always starts with good breakfast...

It's a Good Sunday! =)

Bear & Cat Talk

2009-11-06T13:38:00.005+08:00

This has to be written in Chinese then only it'll sound funny, else it wouldn't make any sense.... So for those who can't read Chinese, sorry... =)

Bear: Eh Cat, 你知道吗，有一种baby blanket 可以用来带贝比从医院回家。那天我们在医院看到，remember?
Cat: 哪个不是毛巾么？
Bear: 不是，它可以从头抱到脚的，很可爱的咧。。。
Cat: 什么shape的？三角形？四角形？五角形？六角形？
Bear: 我不知道咧。。。我也没有看过。。。btw, 人家通常讲四方形，不是四角形。
Cat: Why咧？这样。。。是五方形？
Bear: 不是。。不是。。是五角形。。。
Cat: Huh why...?
Bear: 因为四方形是 square 嘛。。。华语 - 方 means square。。。
Cat: 啊。。。 This is so confusing... so, it's 四方形，五角形，六方形，七角形？
Bear: Err... 其实我也不知道。。。
Cat: 这样你应该是 “猪脚形”。。。哈哈哈哈！
Bear: =.= .... 你的华语最近很厉害ho...
.
.
.
.
.
.
Cat: (**with cheeky grin**) Eh Bear, 有没有两角形的？
Bear: =.= 。。。不要吵啦。。。

Our Dinner

2009-10-26T19:31:00.002+08:00

It has been a long time since I made Aglio Olio.... Tonight I gave it a try again combining with all the recipe posts that I have read online, and with my slightly more improved cooking skill *shy*... and it tasted much better than the previous one!

Domino's Chili Flakes is good! Two little packet actually is quite spicy for two big portions!

EG's dinner

My dinner

It's always easier to prepare spaghetti for dinner. I started preparing at 6.30pm and by 7.30pm we're done with eating and washing can also be done in 15 minutes since there's nothing too oily to wash.... :)

Bear & Cat Talk

2009-10-24T20:26:00.002+08:00

On one fine Saturday, while Bear is cooking lunch...

Cat: Bear, your fridge very messy. Let me tidy it up for u...

Bear: OK!

...After 15 minutes....

Cat: Done!

Bear: (Looked into the fridge) Gosh, my fridge is so empty now!

Cat: Yeah, I have "defragged" your fridge for you....

Bear: =.=... And what's my kiwi doing up there with the eggs?!

Cat: It's Dinasaur's egg... with hair!! Kekeke!!

Bear: Very funny... so the one next to it is the Ostrich's egg?

2009 Raya Break

2009-10-06T17:56:00.006+08:00

This year, I looked forward for Raya break eagerly as it's a LONG weekend! And for the first time I was eagerly waiting to go back to Taiping - because it means I can sleep, and eat, and watch tv, and don't need to cook and do nothing. :D

Before we went back, I have told EG that I want to eat as much as I can during this holiday. And I had this strong craving for Taiping Ipoh Bakery's Pandan Layer cakes. Being extra loving these days, he promised to buy the cake for me, and on top of that, he'll also bring me to Ipoh to makan-makan! Yay! :)

True enough, the next day after we went back to Taiping, we dropped by Ipoh Bakery and found out that we had to order Pandan Layer cakes and can only pick up on 5pm in the evening. And they are going to close for Raya break. So, we placed our order, and seriously, it's so hard to resist all the cakes inside the bakery as everything smells so nice. We bought an Almond Cake and wanted to have it for the next few days. But guess what, it tasted SO GOOD that EG and I finished the whole thing after lunch in less than 1 hour time! Gosh! It tasted heavenly (for me laa)! It's not too sweet and we think it's made of wheat flour that makes the cake with very good biting texture. Ahh... I'm definitely going to eat it again when I go back next time.

Almond cake

EG's mum picked up the Pandan Layer cake later in the evening. I'd be crazy if I tell u that we finished that too! We kept it in fridge for the next day as we couldn't fit it into our tummy anymore.

The next day, we went to Ipoh for lunch + dinner. EG's colleagues were kind enough to be our tour guide and brought us go makan something else rather than the usual Bean Sprout Chicken rice. :P... We went to Pasir Pinji for the famous yong tau fu. Apparently they said it's very famous because it is very cheap and many ppl have been blogging about it. I didn't take any picture there as it'll be very obvious that I'm a tourist if I were to do that. :P. I guess u can just find many pics if you google about it. The yong tau fu serving there is HUGE, and VERY CHEAP. I think averagely 50 cents per BIG piece.

Then, we went to buy Ipoh famous salted chicken. We had to wait for 1 hour after placing our order so we walked around the place to buy some other cookies and biscuits and mooncakes.

The famous Ipoh salted chicken

After lepaking around, and we went back to the shop for our chicken. While waiting, Eg and I snapped some stupid pictures. One thing funny I observed there is, there are many shops selling salted chicken, but people will rather wait for 1 hour for THIS PARTICULAR shop. Well, even EG's colleagues who are the locals also recommended that shop. Some other shops had MANY nicely wrapped chicken but no customer - all are at the famous one waiting. Guess they must be really good. Anyway, we bought 4 chicken back. :P. Not all of myself la crazy - 1 for all of us including EG's family, 1 for EG and I to bring back Penang, 1 for EG's aunties, and 1 for EG's parents. ;)

Oh, almost forgot about the Pandan Layer cakes. We had it after dinner. Tasted as good as before. Not too sweet and the cold pandan jelly tasted fabulous! =). We finished it the next day after lunch.

Pandan Layer Cake

After I came back to Penang, first thing I did of course is to weigh myself. And gosh, I grew and put on 1kg just during the weekend..! But it was really good food. I'm definitely going to buy the cakes again next time! :P

简单的幸福

2009-09-26T14:28:00.005+08:00

我们的午餐

常常问老公要吃什么

答案通常是 - 要吃你煮的

他总是觉得吃老婆煮的是很幸福的

有时觉得煮的很累

可是看到老公吃的津津有味

却觉得累一点是值得的

有时快乐可以很简单

幸福也可以很简单

痞子英雄

2009-09-17T12:37:00.008+08:00

最近，生活忙得可以。忙工作，忙教会，忙生活。唯一的娱乐，就是看看连戏剧。

上个月，在Astro看到痞子英雄的宣传，第一个反应是：仔仔能演这么man的戏吗？过后，宣传越来越热，跟听说这是台湾第一部动作偶像剧 - 不是那种传统的超有钱男子喜欢上穷女生的悲怜爱情故事或 vice versa - 看了几个片断, 就心痒痒, 找朋友找来了几个link, 在周末download 全套24集, 开始我一个星期的"追戏生涯".

看完后,真的给两个大拇指.

故事情节出人意外, 从一个小小的毒品追踪案, 慢慢揭发一幕幕惊人的阴谋. 故事情节也不会太夸张. 在戏里的查案工具也很有standard, 不像一些香港戏剧里, 用power point 来做人面比较, 随随便便就show一个98%. 至少这个很有一些美国CSI的feel. 演员方面, 至少我又爱上仔仔了. **shy**. 当然, 一定有爱情故事, 让我感动了一阵子. 仔仔痞痞的性格, 让人有一点哭笑不得. 赵又廷这个新人, 也演得相当有水准. 其他的演员也很不错. 美中不足的是 - 他们说话还是有一点模糊不清. 如果没有 subtitle, 我应该也是看得8个耳朵.

很喜欢痞子英雄里的插曲 - 放逐爱情. 很好听. 很感人的歌词. EG说在我的心深处,还是一个无知小女孩. 不知道这是不是official的MV, 可是可以和大家share share 一些戏里的情节.

很期待痞子英雄Part II.

Mum A-Like

2009-08-28T11:12:00.004+08:00

Some said before you marry a girl, make sure you check-out her mother first. Because very likely that the girl will behave similar, or look similar like her mother when she grows old.

My age number is going to change its first digit soon in another year. And I slowly discovered that I'm behaving more and more like my mum.

Case 1:
While EG was packing to go US last month...
Me: "Please make sure you buy a gallon of distilled water from the grocery shop when you touch down - I heard ppl say about the water in US when I was in Phoenix last time but not sure of your area but better be safe than sorry. Then, go buy phone card to call home and don't use your handphone to call, it's going to cost you a bomb. And for the breakfast, if you feel jelak with their food, they normally will serve fruits for breakfast as per my experience. On the plane, remember to make sure you check your time and adjust your sleeping time so that you won't have so much jetlag. And remember when you're coming back don't wear so much belt or any metal thing that will make the sensor rings to save any hassle being questioned. And remember to be careful with your spending as the price numbers there look so small, USD10 seems like nothing but after tax it'll cost u about RM40++... Watch out your expenses, don't overspend. And remember to put some cream on your hands / face so that you don't get flaky skin - the weather there is dry... And remember to take ur vitamin C, and bla bla bla bla bla .... " i can go on for another 10 minutes....
EG: "Hehehehe... I can imagine how you nag your children next time......"
And suddenly I realised, that's how my mum talked to me whenever I'm traveling last time. =.=

Case 2:
EG said our new place really looks like a home because there are clothes (clean or worn) scattering on the sofa or everywhere. I tried to tidy up the living area and make it clean & tidy but just can't. And I have been complaining that the kitchen counter is never clean and there are forever so many things on the kitchen counter and dining table.
And suddenly I remembered: My mum always complained saying that our house can never be clean & tidy when we were young. There are things everywhere in the house always!

Case 3:
It has been raining like cats & dogs (or quote from a friend - cows & horses!! Imagine how heavy the downpour is) in Penang and I can't do my laundry!! :( ... I like the sunny smell after the clothes are dried under the hot sun but now I only get the damp smell. :(. And I was complaining again.
And suddenly it reminded me: My mum used to complain that during rainy season that her clothes can never be dried and I was feeling nothing as I thought it's so nice to sleeep.

Case 4:
I have been cooking quite a bit, and very hardworking in housework ever since we moved to the new place. And so, my hands are having some new scars / marks that's caused by frying oil, hot iron, cutting knife. :P
And one day, EG told me: Your hands & arms are looking more and more like your mum's.

When I was young, I always didn't understand why my mum did things or said things certain ways. But when I grow older, then only I understand how hard her works were last time. Guess it takes time to realize and to appreciate.

Days when you're not around

2009-08-12T10:49:00.002+08:00

I have not been blogging for long, due to many reasons - I sleep latest by 11pm everyday, too many tv programs that get my attention, lazy to use EG's computer in the study room since I have no laptop now and I prefer to blog & watch tv at the same time (:D)...

Another main reason was because EG was on business trip for 3 weeks since Mid July all the way till August. A friend reminded me that I shouldn't be posting this much in internet for security purpose since I'm all alone, a little small size girl, in the house all by myself. So I abide. =)... And then, I have nothing much to blog about since I'm just going work, watched tv, cooked for myself, sleep at 11pm.

It must be very obvious that we have been sticking together always. When he's away, almost everywhere I go, be it in church or office, ppl will be asking me - "Eh, how come alone? Where's your hubby?". I wonder if that's a good thing actually. Church friends are being tactful too by inviting me out for lunches or dinners since they know my usual lunch / dinner mate is always my hubby..

During my previous job, I used to travel more. And being an extrovert person, I have no problem travelling, be it with friends or alone. But, in my current job, my boss told me clearly that there's no travelling opportunity and I have no complain because I thought as a woman, it's now time to settle down and concentrate in what a wife or a future mum should do - just like my mum (ya, ya, u can say I'm old fashioned but I do think & agree that that's a woman's job :P).

Having EG leaving me for 3 weeks, or to be exact, 23.5 days - this is a total new experience for me. I was happy that he finally could travel and see the other side of the world, but was also sad that I'm going to be all alone when he's away. He must be feeling the same when I travelled last time.

EG used to say that he doesn't need a tv when I'm at home as I'll talk and talk and talk and talk and make him laugh most of the times. And he'll be disturbing me or cracking some stupid jokes when we're together and we always enjoy each other's company. When he was away, when I reached home, there's no one cracking stupid jokes. I drove to work myself with the radio on, watched tv but with no one to share when there's new funny advertisement or new trailer on anything, cooked for myself but with no one to enjoy the food together, did my own dishes & cleaned the kitchen myself with no one telling me what happened in the day. Everything in the house was quiet - except with the noise from TV. Timezone difference made it even harder for us to talk on the phone. When I'm sleeping, he's working and vice versa.

I have been planning many things to make sure my days passed faster. And finally my dear came back safely after 3 weeks. Though many warned me about H1N1 in airport but heck, I'm more excited that my hubby is finally back. =)... But I did pray before I entered the airport. Hehe...

The 3 weeks separation actually made me realised that how much I enjoy EG's company. Though sometimes we fight and argue but his company couldn't be replaced by any other things. I remember during our pre-marital counselling in church, my pastor asked us what's the main reason that we want to get married and both of us had the same answers - to have each other's companionship. =)

Now that EG is back, we tend to appreciate each other's company now more and often telling each other how bad life is without each other by our side. Hopefully this can last longer before our usual fight & argument start again. :P

Devilled Chicken Wings

2009-07-26T21:40:00.005+08:00

I always love chicken wings, but not for EG. So, since I'm only cooking for myself tonight, I decided to try out the devilled chicken wing that I copied from a recipe book when I attended CG @ a friend's place. I bought my chicken wings from Tesco Extra after church today.

The recipe is rather simple. My first attempt was good and I felt so good that I can't don't write it in my blog to remember this. :D

Ingredients (my version - for 1 person)
2 chicken wings
Corn Flour (Original recipe is normal flour)
Chopped garlic
1 stalk of celery - cut into slices
1 tbsp of dark soy sauce
1 tbsp of black vinegar
1/2 tbsp of brown sugar
Water

Marinade
Few slices of gingers - you can cut them into small pieces
Salt to taste
Pepper (I used black pepper from Sarawak baru best.. :P)

First, marinade the chicken wing. I coated them with corn flour (i don't have normal flour :P). Heat oil in the pan and saute the chicken wings in low heat. Note that it's not deep fried chicken wings so I don't use A LOT OF oil, but just enough to saute them until they turned brown & cooked - checked by using a fork to poke parts of the chicken wings and make sure it can go through. Take out & leave the chicken wing aside.

With little oil, fry the garlic till goden. Add in celery and stir fry for a while. Add in combination of soy sauce + vinegar + brown sugar + water. Stir over gentle heat until sugar dissolve. Add in corn flour to thicken the sauce. Leave it simmer under low heat for 1 minute.

Lastly, add in the chicken wing, coat them evenly with the sauce and heat through before served.

It's quite messy to fry the chicken wings due to the shape since i didn't put a lot of oil. But I'm very surprised that the result turned out really good. Oh, i love the sweet + soury taste of the vinegar + sugar. Next round, I'll try with drumsticks only since it's easier to fry that than the whole chicken wing. =)

PS: Sorry, there's no picture as EG is having the camera. I used my phone camera but it turned out real bad.... So till i cook it again, i'll take some better pics to update this post.

Cantonese Steam Chicken

2009-06-17T20:07:00.004+08:00

As a working lady, cooking dinner is always a challenge. By the time I reach home, I already don't have the luxury to slowly prepare my dinner, else, it'll be supper instead. I always look for fast meals so that I can get my dinner done in shortest time that I can, and make my kitchen least dirty / oily. I found this recipe few months ago and it's so easy, hassle-free and most importantly - fast!

The recipe is simple:
1. Chicken - I get the chicken thigh from Giant / Tesco and get them to cut into half for me. And I remove all the skin when I am home. Put them on a plate.
2. In a bowl - mix a tbsp oyster sauce, 1/2 tbsp of soy sauce, 1/2 tsp sesame oil, 1 tbsp chinese shaoxing wine, 1 tsp of sugar, 1 tbsp of cornstarch. You can put some salt too if you want it to be saltier.
3. Pour the mixture over the chicken.
4. Soaked & slice some mushroom (optional), dry sherry, ginger, garlic and spread over the chicken.
5. Put them into a pot and steam for 15-20 minutes. DONE!

Before

After

Today I cooked 3 dishes for dinner. We normally eat 2 dishes on weekday but today I was in good mood so I made another omelette. But the main point is, we do eat for dinner... but I am not sure why everyone says we are thin / lost a lot of weight - especially to EG. Everybody was telling him that he has lost weight AFTER the wedding. Hmm... I wonder what does THAT mean... =.=. Anyway, this is the proof that I do feed him OK?! :P

Our dinner

Too bad, the boss said today's dinner was so-so only and it was too much!! So, again, it's not my fault that he can't eat much and can't put on weight... alright? :D

For DoDo

2009-06-09T10:19:00.002+08:00

I wrote a long long letter for my dear sis before she left for UK, but someone said it sounded like a creepy suicidal note, so I repost.

Dodo, Remember:
1. Drink a lot of water in the flight to prevent dehydration, and walk a bit on the flight to prevent water retention
2. Don't miss home so much... (not easy for someone who has the record of flying back Sarawak from KL 7 times a year)... Enjoy yourself there!!!!
3. Watch your food - control the cheese, milk, bread, dairy products (it's hazardous for Teng's girls!!!!!)
4. Learn to cook....
5. Travel around and post pics in Facebook.....
6. Buy souvenirs for me (like what i did everytime i travel ok?? ok??).... <-- this is very important....
7. Stay prayerful, FIND & GO church. :P
8. I don't mind LV, Gucci or Coach that you mentioned last night though I am not exactly a bag person....
9. Go online in MSN more often.
10. Send your pics so that I can tell if you should go on diet... :P

Most useful present for you:
Joshua 1:9 - Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go

Will miss you dearly, and take care of yourself for the next 365 days! See you next year! And come stay my new place! =)

PS: Hopefully you're a yee yee when you're back. *wink*

The Hungry Hog

2009-06-05T08:39:00.006+08:00

Note: This post is non-Halal...

During my visit to KL during Raya Holiday last year, we stayed at our good friend's aka EG's best man aka our wedding dinner emcee's place in Subang. And as usual, we'll meet up with the rest of the gang for some makan and catch up session.

We were running out of ideas on where to eat, and Yeng (the host) suggested to cook for us. YIPPIE!!.. I remembered there were homemade sausages, pastas, and ROASTED PORK. It has already been >8 mths since I ate the homemade roasted pork but I still miss it dearly!... It's crunchy and juicy, and unlike those out there (full of fats), this is definitely healthier - I saw the cook made it in front of me..! Should have copied down the recipe.... argh!!

Yummy yummy siu yuk...

And now, lucky for those who're in KL or Klang Valley!! Now the great cook has started his weekend business to serve siu yuk!! Drop by The Hungry Hog for more details. You should really try this, and I am sure you'll just love it!! =)

And if you think that the cook will be like "zu yuk weng", then you're wrong! Don't believe me? Order it and go collect from the leng-cai cook and see it with your own eyes!! =). Am sure you won't regret - both of the pork, and the cook! :D

Enjoy!

PS: How I wish he could courier it to Penang too....!!

Forgiveness

2009-06-03T09:03:00.002+08:00

I stumbled into this blog today and found out this article is so right.

I love the last part:
“Forgiveness is above all a personal choice, a decision of the heart to go against the natural instinct to pay back evil with evil. Forgiveness may seem like weakness, but it demands great spiritual strength and moral courage, both in granting it and in accepting it.” ~Pope John Paul II

It doesn't only apply in marriage life, but it also applies in our daily life to everyone around us...

Best way of spending money

2009-06-01T17:50:00.007+08:00

I realised, the best way to spend money is to spend FREE money. :D

Weeks ago, we have some left over Popular vouchers (around RM190) to spend before they expire. So, EG and I went Gurney after work and spent almost the whole night in Popular to find things to buy, also need to make sure it's worth the values!! (kiasu-ism) And finally, we got 1 CD, and few books, and paid extra RM0.80 on top of the vouchers. Feel good! :D

Last Saturday, I woke up and suddenly remembered that I have more vouchers from the awards from my previous company which are going to expire soon (like in the next 1 or 2 days). 1st is my RM50 Haagen Dazs Vouchers - So, EG and I went Queensbay Mall and ordered two ice creams for ourselves. Sometimes I wonder how could ice cream cost so much, but guess it was really really gooooood and ricccccchhh and it's even BETTER when I don't need to pay from my own wallet but paid with vouchers... Kekekeke... Well, got la top up RM12. But it was so worth it! :)....

EG and his favoriate chocolates flavor

I wanted to try something different so I ordered Tangy mango

Next, I went to Body Shop and spent the RM50 vouchers with their foundation - the only thing that I think is useful for me. I have too many of those lotions and most of them ended up in the trash when they reach their expiry date. So, got my usual foundation (which i don't use often now) and top up another RM8+. So nice!!

We wanted to go to coffee bean to spend the other RM10 voucher but the ice cream was sweet and we wanted something salty instead, so that didn't happen, but we went KFC and shared a plate of snack plate to fill our tummy before going for a wedding dinner later on the night. And no, this round no voucher - using our own money from our wallet. Hehe...

It has been a long time since we can stroll in shopping mall relaxingly with no worry. I wish more relaxing weekends coming for us to rejuvenate after a long, tiring working week... *only if i don't need to do housework... bleah....

Paradox of Life

2009-05-03T20:29:00.007+08:00

I heard this from Pastor John's sermon in EPCC this morning and thought it was really meaningful.... Then found it in internet later...

The paradox of our time in history is that
We have taller buildings but shorter tempers,

wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints.
We spend more, but have less,

we buy more, but enjoy less.
We have bigger houses and smaller families,

more conveniences, but less time.
We have more degrees but less sense,

more knowledge, but less judgment,

more experts, yet more problems,

more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.
We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.
We've learned how to make a living, but not a life.
We've added years to life not life to years.
We've been all the way to the moon and back,

but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbour.
We conquered outer space but not inner space.
We've done larger things, but not better things.
We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.
We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice.
We write more, but learn less.

We plan more, but accomplish less.
We've learned to rush, but not to wait.
We build more computers to hold more information,

to produce more copies than ever,

but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods, and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships.

These are the days of two incomes but more divorce,

fancier houses, but broken homes.
These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers,

throwaway morality, one night stands,

overweight bodies,

and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill.
It is a time when there is much in the showroom window

and nothing in the stockroom.
A time when technology can bring this letter to you,

and a time when you can choose either

to share this insight, or to just hit delete.

Remember, spend some time with your loved ones,

because they are not going to be around forever.
Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe,

because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.
Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you,

because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.
Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones,

but most of all mean it.
A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt

when it comes from deep inside of you.
Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment

for someday that person will not be there again.
Give time to love, give time to speak,

and give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take,

but by the moments that take our breath away.

Encouragement

2009-04-15T09:17:00.000+08:00

There is an Arm that never tires
When human strength gives way;
There is a Love that never fails
When earthly loves decay.

—Wallace

Bear & Cat Talk

2009-04-14T09:11:00.002+08:00

Life has been very busy and stressful. Bear & Cat now work in the same company so they take heavy breakfast at cafe sometimes together, and will skip lunch and use lunch time to sort out things.

Last week after office hour
Bear & Cat skipped lunch.
Bear: Cat, are you hungry?
Cat: Not really. I ate something during tea time.
Bear: Really?! Why never call me...
Cat: Err... I just went down to grab a piece cake.
Bear: =.=
Cat: But I was sceptical and checking out if the Bear is in the cafe too.. I look see look see no bear, faster buy something and run back to my cube. **LOL**
Bear: STUPID!

Yesterday Lunch Time
Cat: Today I'm very full. Let's skip lunch.
Bear: OK.
Cat: Are u hungry?
Bear: A bit, but I think still OK la.
Cat: Maybe later we go eat tea time la.
Bear: See la, if I'm busy.

After work
Bear: Cat, did u take tea time?
Cat: Ya I did.
Bear: Really?! Why never call me? What did u eat?
Cat: Err.... I ate the blue pulut with Kaya.
Bear: Why never call me!! I iz hungwee.....
Cat: Err... Actually hor... I got something else to tell u... actually hor... After we came back just now, I went to cafe and wanted to grab something. Then I see still got fried rice, so I tapao fried rice with some omelette.
Bear: HUH... HOW COULD YOU?! And you never call me..?!
Cat: *laughing all the way*.. I tot u said u are not hungry... I never thought they have left over fried rice (explaining, explaining)
Bear: HMPH! And now I am very hungry now. I am going to cook a lot tonight. I'll do an egg for myself.
Cat: Bear U are so funny! Oh, Egg again? This week we ate quite a bit of eggs.
Bear: I never say I wanna cook for u.. You got omelette already during lunch.
Cat: Huh......?!.... Please.......
Bear: NO WAY! :P

Zi Mui's Weddings

2009-03-24T22:00:00.005+08:00

If you ask me what's the most memorable time in my life, besides my own wedding day, the next will be my life in university - there's the place where I met most of my good friends. :)

Our innocent looks in MMU @ 1998
more pics here

Somehow, fate brought us together, and we grew up together in the Uni's pathetic hostel. We spent most of our time together esp. since we are not local. We explored mamak (yah, called us sua-gu :P), explored the public transport to get to town and etc. It was funny though it has been almost 7-10 yrs ago, but we still laugh like nobody's business whenever we talk about the past stories whenever we meet up.

I thank God that all of my friends are doing very well in their life, and most of us have moved on to the next stage of our life, i.e. promoted to wifey (and some already are mothers :P). I was recalling my ji muis wedding and to my amusement, all of us got married in sequence since 2006 to 2009 non-stop! :)

2006-07 SF's wedding @ KL

2007-09 Papakochan's wedding @ KL

2008-01 My wedding @ PG

2008-12 Shizuka's wedding @ PG

2009-03 PC's wedding @ KL

So, I guess the next wedding to attend will be 2010?! Kekekeke... *hint* *hint* :D. It's just a very happy thing to see good friends to have a healthy, good, and happy life, don't you agree?

My Big Potato

2009-03-19T13:14:00.009+08:00

This month - is a month to remember. I have finally paid off my car loan with EON bank after 5 years. EG called it big potato as he always complains it's heavy. But I still love it to bits. Everytime when people asked about my car, I'll gladly tell the "touching" story of how I got my lovely potato. =).

Working in Cyberjaya without a car is a total nightmare, things were even worse with me staying @ USJ. There is no public transport to Cyberjaya and no one could give me a ride. I have no choice, but I had to buy a car. I am the eldest in my family - so this buying car thing is quite a hoo-haa as my parents doubt if I know how to get a proper car. And since I am the only working "adult" then, and looking at the fact that my brother & sister in KL were going to depend on me to fetch them to/from KLIA, or moving house, or go shopping or prom night (?) (:P), and with my parents visiting us kinda often, I need to get a saloon car that can fit easy 4-5 ppl (and actually, if my whole family comes together - still cannot fit :P.. we have total of 6 :P), and with boot space to fit the luggages.

There weren't much choices then. Waja is too big for me to handle, and I was really really bad in parking. And imported cars are out of my budget. With my dad's help & some limited $$ in my piggy bank (since I only worked for 2 yrs then), I "wanted" to buy Proton Wira SE (Special Edition *ahem*) Automatic. I got scared a bit when my friends keep complaining to me how hard it is to drive in KL with manual car.

Note that I said - "WANTED". Of course, it didn't happen. The stooopid salesman, which is also the manager of the shop, actually gave supposingly-to-be-my-car away to another customer, and requested me to wait for another 3 months! I asked for my deposit refund, and called up Proton HQ to lodge a complain. The region manager called up and told me this is the first complain in 10 years, like I care. Duh!! I was just too angry and too pissed off. And I actually cried over it. =.=. I am not sure what happen to the sales manager after that (though I hope he got fired :P) but I think anyhow he deserved that - no credibility how to be manager. =.=.

To cut the story short, out of real desperation, I called up one of my MMU friends working in EON, "crying" for help. And he told me, OK Winnie, I'll settle for you. Wait for my call. True enough, after 1 week+, he called and told me - Winnie, your car is here. Come and take. Then, I went over to pay my deposit, sign loan agreement, and took my car.

Before that, I didn't see how the car look like. I was very lucky that the car was actually the latest model of 2004, with sport rims & air bags. But one thing - it's manual. But heck, I need a car. I drove manual all the time in my hometown - don't see a problem with that. And the car plate number is my name's initial + my birth date day. Mind you - I didn't choose the number or ask for anything. The only thing I told my friend is, I want the Wira SE - black one. That's all.

That's why I always believe my car, is God's gift to me.

I could never forget the first day when I drove my car from EON Glenmarie back to USJ. The touch of the car, and my anxious feeling of owning something that belong to myself (Well, not fully owned yet, since I was still on loan). And the first one that I showed off my new potato then to was of course, my brother in Sri Petaling, and let him tested drive a bit. Though in these 5 yrs, I have changed quite a bit of the spare parts and etc, but my potato has been going through a lot with me (and my family) . It has done what it should. And with EG's help it's well maintained too.

EG always tells me next time we should sell off one Wira (since he's also driving the normal Wira) and get a better car - but I never agree to sell my car. He said he has a lot of memories with his car, but hey, I have A LOT of memories with my potato too! =). So, no mutual agreement was made, and we're still having two wiras with us.

We're going to KL for my friend's wedding this weekend - and I told EG, I'll want to drive this round since we're driving my potato down. I'd love to reminisce the day when I got my potato. It's going to be our 5th Year anniversary. :)

There's a funny conversation about my potato when EG and I were driving down to KL somewhere last year (yah, we have too many friends' weddings to attend :P)

W: (driving & speeding a bit :P) Hey, my car is Wira SE. It's Special Edition, but it also can be Sports Edition eh... :D
E: Ya ya.. and u know, it also can be Slow Edition or Silly Edition or Stupid Edition...
W: =.=

CNY 2009 in Miri

2009-02-16T13:18:00.013+08:00

I know Chinese New Year is already over for almost >1 week now - But work has been really busy since I am picking up new things so I can't blog in office, and life is also busy with many other things - especially since now I am sharing computer with EG - I am just too lazy to blog.

EG and I had an agreement that we'll take turn to celebrate Chinese New Year at our respective hometown alternatively - i.e. 2008 in his house, so 2009 in my house. So this year, we went back to Miri for CNY.

EG had his 3-colored-special-teh-C in Miri as showns in TV8 Hochiak!. We didn't go to the same restaurant as recommended by TV8 but we went to another place - thanks to my sister. EG loves it. What so special about this Teh-C? Go watch the video clip @ the above link. :P

The 3-Colored-Special-Teh-C

My best friend - Shizuka - was in Miri for CNY this year too. I think she feels that Mirians are really nice (just like me!!! :D) so she chose & married a Miri-man. What a coincident!! The funniest thing is, another zi mui of ours also married a Borneo-man but she's @ Sabah. We always find it funny but anyway, I am not going to discuss that now. :)

Since both Shizuka & EG have been complaining about the not-so-nice kolok mee & laksa that they had at home, so this round, I did some survey and we went for breakfast together @ a newly open coffee shop (maybe not too new also) - Mdm Wee - who made her own noodles for both kolok mee & laksa.

Both the non-sarawakians took the famous Sarawak Laksa

Another view of the laksa.

Glad that the two non-Sarawakians said it's nice. :D

We waited for 45 minutes for the food to arrive. Well, it was long, but since we had quite a bit to chat with each other, we didn't feel that it was too long. But my mum gave a not-very-happy remark when she knew it as she said the coffee shop always has this problem.

All the Sarawakian ordered their kolok mee.

Mine is with soy sauce + chili sauce.

EG and I reached Miri nearly on the midnight on Thursday. And on Friday, we went to airport 3 times to fetch my sister and my two brothers, coming back from KL & Sibu, all different flight schedule. It has been a real long time that 4 of us got together. The last time I think was during my wedding?! That's already >1 year ago!!!

After our breakfast together with Shizuka (yeah they all tagged along :P), we went to Marina Bay as konon-nya it's going to be one of the high class area in Miri (?!) after x years (????). Me not sure but since I have never been there, we just stopped by to have a look, and took some pics.

The 4 Tengs

EG and I

This year, our parents didn't cook all the dishes for the reunion dinner after our persuasion as it just took too much work and time to do that. We catered half, and cooked the other half. Both my parents started to get busy in the kitchen at 2pm+, and all dishes were ready at 4.30pm. So, we had our reunion dinner @ 4.30pm. How bizzarre right?! But like my dad said, eat slowly, and later 9pm we'll have another round of supper if anyone is hungry. :D

>10 dishes for reunion dinner.

We didn't even finish half of them!!

It's also our tradition to play fire crackers at 12am on the 1st day of CNY. Almost all the houses at our street - Jalan Baiduri 1 - lit up the fire crackers. And No, no police dropped by. :D

It's too loud for a cat :P

Gong Xi Fa Cai !!

Though there are quite a lot of people visiting our place during CNY as usual, this year, we have booked our time to go to Brunei for the famous and cheap Sushi in Escapade on the 3rd day of CNY. My dad was quite reluctant to go but since the whole family planned to go, he wouldn't want to miss out the fun too. I'll blog about that next time soon (I hope!) :D

My family @ Escapade Sushi, Brunei

Last but not least, ever since my brother took up photography as his hobby, we never go studio for our family shoot anymore. This year, since we had a new member - EG - joining us in our CNY celebration, of course we won't miss the chance and snapped our family portraint on the 2nd day of CNY in our house.

Family photo 2009

Going home.... is always the BESTEST of the BEST!

E

2009-02-13T21:27:00.001+08:00

Happy Valentine's Day Supercolossal

My Quillling

2009-01-21T17:25:00.004+08:00

During Christmas, Karen from my church (Note: She's also the one who designed my wedding invitation cards that received countless good comments) gave us a fridge magnet as Christmas gift. My first response was just amazed + astonished looking at this cute stuff. It's so simple, and yet, SO NICE!.... It came with a custom made bag with no glue.... But I forgot to take a pic of that.

When I was making some invitation cards for a church event in Karen's place, she told me this is called Quilling. And then she showed me those that she did for the Pastors in church, I was even more speechless looking at her work. Then, I started to have itchy hands to try on quilling too.

Since CNY is coming, Jireh U CG had a small celebration during CG time. I have decided to make a simple bookmark for all my CG members.

So, firstly, I have to cut the paper into 0.3cm size, and it's not as easy as I thought since I don't have proper tools.

Paper strips

Next, I started to roll the orange paper to be the mandarin orange, and the green ones to be the two small leaves. There are supposed to be the right tools to do the rolling but I don't have. So I have to use toothpick / hairpin to help me in the rolling. Lucky thing is my fingers are rather small, so it does help a bit. :P...

When I started rolling, then I found out my mandarin oranges are not in even sizes due to the inaccurate measurement during cutting. Gee... Now I really admire Dr. Andrew & Karen's steady hands since they will do the measuring & cutting by themselves if the quantity is not a lot.

My cacat mandarin oranges :P

Since it's Chinese New Year, I purposely bought some RED paper as the base. At First, I cut them into rectangle but EG said it looks weird. So after some trials, EG suggested me to cut off the edges on the top, and stick my mandarin oranges & their leaves on top.

My halfway done book mark

Then EG helped me printed my favorite verse from Jeremiah for 2009, with nice fire crackers as clipart (Chinese New Year maa....). Then, stick them slightly below the mandarin oranges, and ta-da..... here's my final piece of "art"... :P

My bookmark

In total, I made 25 pieces of book marks for my CG members, including 5 for myself and EG and I wanted to give my siblings too. Seriously I don't think it's VERY VERY nice but it's a good start for my little interest in quilling. I am still looking for the proper tools to do this.

Bookmarks for JirehU members

The bookmarks were given out on last Friday and I wasn't in the CG as I was on my way back to Taiping. At 10pm, my handphone was bombarded with thank-you SMSes -- That's how we thank someone when they are not around in CG.

I am inspired to make better ones next time. :)... But anyway, CNY is just around the corner. So, Gong Xi Fa Cai to everyone! And have a great time with your family and your love ones!!

Anniversary Presents

2009-01-16T15:53:00.011+08:00

I have been looking for a new watch since both my current watches are at least >6 years old now. All girls like new things ok? :P.... Anyway, after looking for weeks, finally EG bought the Casio Sheen for me.

My new watch

I asked EG what he wants for anniversary. Funny, he asked for a bottle of potato chip for his anniversary present. Kakakaka!!! Ok here's the background - I once read in some magazine that potato chips are bad for health and are cancerous. I am not sure how true this is but EG used to eat quite a bit of potato chips at home - especially when he's reading his novel before he sleeps. I think that's a bad habit so I strictly prohibited potato chips @ our home.

Anyway, since it's anniversary - so I got his favorite Jacker's potato chips for him. :P

Jacker Potato Chips - EG's anniversary present

Ya, I know. It's unfair right? But then, nothing is fair in a relationship, right? No? :P. Kekekeke... **evil laugh**

1st Year Anniversary

2009-01-15T17:32:00.014+08:00

Life has been busy these days - both in office, and after office. And that's why now only I am going to write about the celebration that EG and I had for our anniversary last weekend.

Strictly speaking, it wasn't our anniversary *yet*, but then again, it's actually the day we registered. For us, our wedding day is actually the day when we said the vows before God. However, since we have things tied up during the coming weekends and also preparing for our home trip back to Miri for CNY (YIPPIE!!), we have decided to celebrate it earlier.

EG found in a friend's blog about Blue Reef Fish & Chip shop @ Tanjung Bungah. We did a small search in google and found most good comments on the shop. Since EG and I are rather small eaters, the initial plan for buffet was off, and we decided to head for this new restaurant @ the other side of Penang island.

Map downloaded from some other blogs

I didn't manage to take a pic in the shop but it's a very cosy restaurant situated @ Casa Permai - a very quite and peaceful neighbourhood @ Tanjung Bungah. I felt slow-and-easy as it's not crowded, and you can even take your time take a walk @ the small garden opposite Blue Reef, which we didn't, where you see children and kids are doing all sorts of activities there like skating, jogging, etc.

The waiters & waitresses are very attentive and they can give very good suggestion on food to order. For the appertiser, we got smoked tuna salad with vinaigrette. It was very refreshing and the tuna was very fresh and they just melted in your mouth. Yums!

Smoked Tuna Salad with Vinaigrette (RM15)

For EG, he tried the dish where most people recommended - the Fish & Chips. It came with two choices - either battered or with bread crumbs. According to the waitress, for the first option, the fish is battered with beer while the second just with normal bread crumbs. So, EG tried the first one. When the food arrived, EG was amazed by the portion of the food.

Fish & Chips (RM16)

It looks different from the normal fish & chip from the normal shops - where it comes with HUGE fried batter, with lots of oil. For the one @ Blue Reef, the whole piece of the fish is full of juicy fish fillet. You're eating the fish, not the batter. :D... And the beer batter made the fish taste slightly different.

Look how juicy the fish is... Yummy...

For me, I am a salmon lover so I got a pan seared salmon with couscous. This was the first time I heard of couscous and the waitress explained that it's a kind of pasta from Mediterranean. The portion doesn't look real big but it was really very filling. And it has a really good food presentation. I didn't really fancy the couscous. It tasted good, but I just couldn't have too much of them. However, EG loves it very much and I think he took almost half of the couscous from my plate. =)

My Yummy Salmon Dinner (RM19).....

In between meals, there were waitresses kept dropping by our table and asked if the food is OK, if we need any help, or if we need anything. The service is very good and we were thinking they might charge 15% or more for service charge (kekeke!!) but to our surprise, the price is NETT! There's no surcharge. And the price is very reasonable.

The next highlight of the dinner was the cake. Weeks ago, EG's colleague ordered a Mille Crepe cake for the project team in office from HumbleBeginnings. And we decided to get one also for our anniversary celebration since I never try it before. I browsed through the website and was quite skeptical of which flavor to choose. Then I decided to choose French Vanilla - the signature flavor - which it's recommended for first timers. For topping, I chose my favorite shredded white chocolates & roasted almond. They don't have any shop but they will do free delivery with online booking of at least 48 hours - but only in Penang & Johor. Hence, they sent me the cake on Sunday and Ta-Da.... here's the cake! :)

French Vanilla Mille Crepe Cake

The waitress wanted to light up the candle for us but we stopped her. *shy* ma.. This Mille Crepe cake has 20 layers of crepes with combination of Fresh Cream & Vanilla custard between each layer. Imagine the amount of time + work needed to do this. And hence, the price is slightly more pricey than the normal cakes. It starts from RM55 for 0.9kg onwards, and we'll need to add RM10 for topping for regular size.

Look at the layers...

I was already 90% full after the dinner. But when I tasted the cake, it just tasted like HEAVEN. And I just couldn't stop eating though I was really very full. The taste is light and no as sweet as the other cakes. The cream and the vanilla custard tasted just NICE and with the sweetness from the shredded white chocolates and the cruchiness from the shredded roasted almonds, it was just PERFECT. =). Of course we didn't finish the cake. We left the remaining 6 pieces for our breakfast / lunch / dinner for the next few days. :).

Another shot of the cake

We were very happy with both the dinner & the cake. I told EG I think we had two of the best food in Penang that night.

Anyway, we were happy that we have endured our first year of marriage together happily. And we thank God for all the grace & blessing He had for us. And Happy 1 Year Anniversary to ourselves. :)

Happy 2009!!

2008-12-31T17:22:00.004+08:00

My mum always says "Time Flies" when we were young, I think she still does. And I never realise how fast time flies as I always wanted to grow up faster.

But now, since I am quite a grown-up now, I can literally feel that time is really flying.

Looking back at 2008, there are just too many things happening in 2008. I remembered I was filled with hopes and excitement while posting my last post to give my Thanksgiving for 2007, I have dreams and dreams. With much love and blessing for the loving God, I have achieved most of my targets, and moreover, more than I have asked for.

Year 2008 marked the biggest change in my life by starting with me marrying the cheekiest guy I have ever met, had a wonderful wedding that I have always dreamt of, and a great honeymoon in Bali. It was just a wonderful wedding. Though everything was hectic and stressful, but in the end, we see God's blessing and everything went on great. Till now, I still flip my wedding photos, and the wedding event still put a smile on my face. Many asked what's the difference before and after I got married, I couldn't really put them in words, but I do feel that relationships after wedding is more challenging to handle comparing to during courtship or when we were boyfriend/girlfriend. But, we're coping well - I thank God for all the good mentors around us who share with us on the ways to maintain good relationship. :D

Work was crazily busy in 2008 too. With great responsibilities, more and more projects came on their ways in 2008. And with much blessing, I still get the chance to travel for meetings & training. On the other hand, without me realising much, I was slowly involved more and more in ministries in EPCC.

Time just flew through 2008. On the last month of 2008, the most shocking news among my friends will be my resignation news - changing to another company. Many were shocked and asking if it's a good time for the change due to the economy downturn. I too struggled for the decision making, but over and over again, God convinced me that this is the right choice that I have made - despite the fact that the increment wasn't that attractive, and I might lose all those that I have established in the old company. Even though the economy is bad and things are uncertain now, but God promises us in Jeremiah 29:11 - "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." I have been praying for a better jobs that allows me to have a better work-life-balance for the past 2 years, and with God's promise, I feel the peace in me and I know this is what He has prepared for me.

2008 ends with many many good news. Though December is my last month in my old company and I should be the most free person in the office, but you were wrong! I was busy with many many other things. In December alone I attended two weddings - one in Malacca and another one in Bukit Mertajam. One of them is the wedding of my very very best friend - Shizuka. I was honored to be appointed as the coordinator + the wedding planner + the em cee + the zi mui head. Imagine the stress! But Joy is more than stress!! This is the first time I became an em cee in a wedding - some more have to speak in Mandarin. Glad that I did well - and Shizuka's parents are very much impressed. And I also took the opportunity to go down to KL to meet up with my girl friends and their baby juniors - the moment together were just priceless.

2008 is going to end (in another 6 hours) soon. Looking back I only feel the joy and feel so blessed. I have yet to set any resolutions for 2009 but I will do it before end of today. I feel the peace and the joy while welcoming the coming of 2009. And again, I believe God has much more in store for both me and EG.

Oh, one resolution that I can think of now is - blog more! I have been very lazy. :)

So my dear friends - hope all of you have a great 2008, and let's welcome 2009 together!! =)

Happy New Year!!

Merry Christmas

2008-12-23T15:28:00.004+08:00

Our 2008 Chritmas Pressies

For the past few years, I never really celebrated Christmas in Penang or in my church as we'll always be going somewhere for the holiday. For this year, since my best friend's wedding is going to be on the day after Christmas, EG and I stayed back. Then only I found out how much I have missed out for the past few years, I felt so much of the Christmas mooood.

I had a fantastic Christmas Harvest party with my Jireh Unlimited CG members on Saturday, and enjoyed the Christmas Service in Vistana on Sunday. Besides, I also received some gifts from some church friends (since previous years I never had any gifts for Christmas since I was rather new in PG). Then I realised, receiving gifts is such a happy thing. The feeling of opening the presents is so exciting, with lots of anticipation of what's underneath the wrapper, like a little girl I used to be. *wink*... Next year, I told EG, we should do Christmas shopping and bless our friends too!!

Christmas is not just about partying & gift exchange, it's to celebrate the birth of Jesus. The Christmas mood is now everywhere, stirring up all the happy mood of all. I always love Christmas, and the day after Christmas too!! *hint* :P

So hereby, I wish everyone have a Merry, Merry Christmas and a Happy, Happy New Year!!

安息。。。

2008-12-08T16:13:00.003+08:00

一年里，有许多的天灾人祸。很多时候，我都把所有当作新闻，当然，有时又会对灾民感到同情。可是，当天灾，当人祸牵涉到我们所认识的人，那种心情非笔墨能形容。

2008年12月6日，我与一些朋友结伴到马六甲。当我们到达目的地时，看到电视新闻报道国际山庄土堋的新闻，共有4人丧命。那时，我还不以为意。当我们在马六甲Jonker Street时，我收到我妹发送给我的一则短讯，告诉我我们在两年前，在中国新年旅游团认识的一位朋友，是其中的一位受害者。

前几个月，我还刚与我的朋友的丈夫在Facebook里互问彼此的境况。他们还在网上上载朋友怀孕的像片。朋友也刚在两个月前刚刚产下一位男婴。我还刚刚在Facebook里看到朋友与夫家四代同堂的全家照。记忆在不断的回到两年前我与她在中国杭州湖中的谈话，想起她与她丈夫恩爱的画面。这一切一切一直在我的脑海中不断的游转。

我的心情，无比的伤感。新闻报道朋友夫家全家安全，朋友是唯一的受害者。

生命- 是如此的脆弱。我深深的感触- 今天不知明天事的这一句话。很多时候，我们以为一切在自己的掌握中，可是，我们却忘了，人其实很渺小，生命除了脆弱，更是短暂。我的心情，是无比的沉重。一夜之间，一个两个月大的婴孩失去了他的母亲，一位丈夫失去他最爱的太太。

无言。。。

生命无常。珍惜身边人。

Hearty Dinner

2008-11-30T20:36:00.003+08:00

I have been taking the easy way for dinner for the past few days - steamed fish, mee suah, soup and etc. So I have decided to cook a better dinner for EG on Sunday (esp. since he has been very patient bringing me shopping for almost 6 hours+ on Saturday).

I tried surfing for a few recipes on soy sauce pork belly. Everyone use slightly different ways to cook soy sauce pork. So I have decided to combine all the recipes to be my own recipe. :P. I mistakenly took down pork rib instead of pork belly from my freezer in the morning. Anyway, I assumed that the recipe for pork belly will work for pork ribs too - and I was right of course. :P

Pork Ribs

Ingredients & Seasoning

The ingredients are simple - garlics (I put a lot as I love garlics), chinese mushroom (soaked till soft and sliced), dried chili, dried cuttle fish (cut into small pieces), 2 pieces of star anise & 3 inches of cinnamon. I got the star anise & cinnamon (or kayu manis) from Giant after church today specially for this dish. For the seasoning, I mixed 2 tsp of Oyster sauce, 1 tsp of Hoisin sauce and 2 tbp of dark soy sauce.

1) Pour in the seasoning 2) Pour in water + all the other ingredients 3) Simmer for 1.5 hours 4) My yummy tao yu bak

So what's the sugar for? I followed some of the recipes online, I heat up the pan and add sugar. Once the sugar caramelised, I put in the meat and coat it with the sugar to lock the juice in (according to the online recipe :P). EG smelled the nice aroma and came in the kitchen to check it out and be the photographer. Next, I put in the seasoning, pour in water, put in all the ingredients and let it simmer for 1.5 hours to make sure the pork became real soft. I also added boiling water occasionally to make sure the gravy didn't dry up. EG commented the gravy was not thick so I add in some corn flour to thicken the gravy. And that's it!

Ingredients for stir-fry lotus root & the dish

For the vegetable dish, I have some left over lotus root from the soup yesterday. So I cleaned and cut up everything and stir fried them in the following sequence - minced garlic > carrots > mushroom > prawns > snow peas > lotus root > capscicum. And ta-daa... it's done in <5 minutes.

Now you see, now you don't

The dinner was served hot with rice. The tao yu bak tasted fantastic and the vegetable dish was still very crunchy. And as usual, EG loves the dinner - especially the tao yu bak. He loves the gravy as he said the saltiness + spiciness tasted really good. He was literally "drinking" the gravy. Funny thing is - the dried cuttlefish didn't make much difference. Maybe I should have put more.

Nom nom nom....

Next time, I'll try with the pork belly and hopefully it'll be as good as this. =)

How do you know your cooking is nice :P

2008-11-03T20:42:00.001+08:00

How do you know your cooking is nice and your hubby loves your cooking? :P

Sky Restaurant @ Penang

2008-10-31T10:06:00.005+08:00

EG drove to town during lunch time few days ago to send his guitar for some i-dunno-what-and-i-dun-really-care "operation". :P. So, he asked his colleague for a nice place to eat in town - since both of us don't really know the hidden restaurants in Penang. The colleague suggested Sky Restaurant along Chulia Street for the best Char Siew rice in Penang.

It is not hard to spot the coffee shop, it's right underneath the Sky Motel. (Picture downloaded from some other people's website on the net :P). We were there early, slightly before 12 noon and the restaurant is already almost full.

Sky Restaurant

A glimpse in the restaurant

Typical coffee shop

The guy told EG we need to wait for 20 minutes for the food to be served. For drinks, EG ordered a white coffee. Wow, it tastes real good - very kao as how we'd normally say. I feel like I am eating chocolate while drinking it.

The very kao white coffee

After waiting for almost >20 minutes, finally the food is served. They have chicken and duck but EG order char siew siu bak. We also got a soup - there's generous amount of pork rib, and a plate of vegetables (choy sum) with char siew sauce.

The food looks little and we wanted to order more chicken, however, the waiting time is quite long due to the crowd so we cancelled our plan. To my surprise, I was overfed and it last even till my dinner time. The siu bak is nice, but nothing much to boast about. However, the char siew is really really nice - crispy and sweet (I think it's honey glazed). It's sinful, but yummy!

The soup

Vegetables with Char Siew sauce

The sinful but yummy char siew siu bak

We were very satisfied with our lunch and planned to bring our KL friends here the next time when they visit Penang. And oh ya, the price is very reasonable too - total of RM12.50 for everything (exclude drinks). I think it's worth it.

So, there goes my diet plan - but YUM! :P

Orange Peeler

2008-10-26T21:28:00.005+08:00

Facebook has been taken too much of my time and it also kills off all my "mood" to blog.

Anyway... What do you think the below silly looking thing is? :D. Well, the title tells it all. It's an orange peeler. EG is an orange lover and oranges are our main fruits after meal almost every day. He bought the orange peeler when we were doing some shopping somewhere and it is very cheap.

To cut oranges, normally we'll use knife and chopping board to cut the oranges. However, as a lazy person as I always be, I am just lazy to wash the knife and chopping board, and clean up the kitchen counter after cutting the fruits. This silly looking kitchen helper does a great job in ease my daily fruit preparation.

Wonder how it works? First, use the broad and flat side of the peeler to "dig" out the i-dunno-what-you-call-it part as like the picture.
Next, place the curved stem into the orange skin. Hold the fruit firmly and just glide it down the orange skin.
You will see the orange skin sliced like the below picture. It nicely separates the orange rind from the fruit.

Some use the flat edge to peel off the orange rind but I use hands. The flat edge can also be used to remove the white bitter pith.
And ta-daa, fruits for the night.
Wonderful tool, right? Try it out and I am sure you'll love it. I tried bringing it to office and it makes the eating orange process so much easier. :)

Beautiful Moments - Moments in Life

2008-10-18T21:09:00.003+08:00

There are moments in life
when you miss someone so much that
you just want to pick them from your dreams
and hug them for real!

When the door of happiness closes, another opens;
but often times we look so long at the closed door that
we don't see the one which has been opened for us.

Don't go for looks; they can deceive.
Don't go for wealth; even that fades away.
Go for someone who makes you smile,
because it takes only a smile to make a dark day seem bright.
Find the one that makes your heart smile.

Dream what you want to dream;
go where you want to go; be what you want to be,
because you have only one life and one chance to do all the things you wants to do.

May you have enough happiness to make you sweet,
enough trials to make you strong,
enough sorrow to keep you human,
and enough hope to make you happy.

The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything;
they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.

The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past;
you can't go forward in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.

When you were born,
you were crying and everyone around you was smiling.
Live your life so at the end,
you're the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take,
but by the moments that take our breath away!

Bear & Cat Talk

2008-09-22T22:21:00.002+08:00

Bear came back from her friend nursery and tuition center opening.

Bear: Eh, Cat! Kids these days are very smart man... Their IQ questions are tough.
Cat: Really? Like what?
Bear: OK, let me ask you. How many different sexes that Moses brought up to the ark before the flood came?
Cat: Eh Moses had no ark la, it was Noah la...
Bear: Haha stupid Cat, you're quite smart ar...
Cat: Of course! You mean you don't know the answer....?!
Bear: -.-....

---------- One Day Later ----------

Bear: Eh Cat, ask you, a black guy and a white lady gave birth to a baby. What's the color of the baby's teeth?
Cat: White la
Bear: Baby has no teeth laaaaa..... Hahahaha
Cat: Hahaha... U know what, as long as I have you in the house, I don't really need a TV....
Bear: -.-....

LOVE

2008-09-21T21:12:00.003+08:00

In our CG on last Friday, we learnt about LOVE - receiving love and giving it away. In Bible, John 13:34 says "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another". 1 John 4:7 says "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God".

Jon split up all the different definitions of LOVE in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a, and asked us to evaluate ourselves on how we're doing for each definition stated. EG and I used the same bible verses during our wedding ceremony 9 months ago. It means a lot to me as LOVE is one of the important elements in a happy marriage. Pastor also shared a short sermon about "Love is Patient" in our wedding ceremony. The learning on Friday just reminded me on what LOVE is again, not only to my own husband, but also to everyone around me.

Love is patient
Love is kind
It does not envy
It does not boast
It is not proud
It is not rude
It is not self-seeking
It is not easily angered
It keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects,
always trusts,
always hopes,
always perseveres.
Love never fails

爱是恒久忍耐
又有恩慈
爱是不嫉妒
爱是不自夸
不张狂
不做害羞的事
不求自己的益处
不轻易发怒
不计算人的恶
不喜欢不义，只喜欢真理
凡事包容
凡事相信
凡事盼望
凡事忍耐。
爱是永不止息。

Beautiful verse.

Mooncake Festival

2008-09-18T21:23:00.004+08:00

My mum is a very much chinese cultured lady. She remembers all the Chinese Festivals - like Mooncake Festival, Dong-Zhi, Dragon-Boat Festival, etc. And every time during the special festivals, there will be special food for dinner - maybe our favorite fried chicken wings, her special stew duck, roasted chicken, red wine chicken soup, etc.

After I left home since 1998, I have never really remember any of the Chinese Festivals anymore. Mum will call up and ask me if I have eaten any tong yuen during dong-zhi, or any dumpling during dragon boat festival. And she'll urge me to buy one just to have the feel of the festival.

I have been very busy recently - though I don't really know what I'm busy with. :P. And I have not been calling my mum often too. Since I'm already married, she expects EG to take care of me more and also, she has another 3 younger ones to worry about since now all of us are out somewhere. Somehow, I missed out the moon cake festival this year. I only found out it's mooncake festival on last Friday when one of my colleagues wished me happy mooncake festival when I was going home.

We wanted to buy some mooncake to celebrate but somehow it didn't happen due to many many reasons. And when we want to buy this week (one week after the mooncake festival), all mooncakes are sold out. :~(. There goes my mooncake festival. There goes my favorite pandan mooncake. :~(.

Anyway, it really makes me home sick. I have not been feeling this for very long (bear in mind I have left home for 10 years!!). But now I really really miss my family much. The thought of going back to Miri for Chinese New Year next year just can't stop bringing a smile to my face - I could even smile in my sleep. Oh, that reminds me of an incident - During Pre-U, I was so excited to go home that I actually laughed "Ha Ha Ha" in my dream in the middle of the night. That gave my roommate a big shock.

How I wish time could fly faster, and I want to go home soooooon..... :~(

Maggi Mee Goreng

2008-09-06T12:10:00.005+08:00

Life has been busy, stressful and depressing at times. I tried to make it a habit to off my laptop after work and make sure I don't check / reply emails at home at night. Well, it lasted for two weeks before the habit came back. And that's also one of the reasons why I haven't been blogging for almost 1/2 month.

So, now I am back - blogging about my cooking again... (Guess my life is kinda boring :P)

My mother-in-law cooks very good maggi goreng. Everytime when she cooks maggi goreng for us when we go back home, EG will ask me to learn how to do that so that I can do for him in Penang.

Of course, I have tried to make maggi goreng a few times before this. And sadly, they are not very successful attempts.

First attempt: Mee overcooked, too soft. :(
Second attempt: Too dry
Third attempt: Too dry
Later few attempts: Too dry, too salty, too.... :(

Anyway, I have been thinking of making maggi goreng for EG this weekend and I have tried to surf the internet for better cooking "secret". Somehow, I got the combination of all the ingredients right and this round it's muchhhhh better.

One for EG, one for me

Simple dish with oyster sauce, onions, garlic, prawns, sawi, eggs, sausages

EG? Happy man today since he enjoyed it, though he said his mum's is still slightly better, but it's good enough. Hopefully I can "produce" the same "product" the next round.

Breakfast with my Best Friend :P

2008-08-16T17:35:00.018+08:00

EG was very excited when he discovered a new place for breakfast last weekend while waiting for me doing my facial. So this weekend, he brought me there. It's actually a Malay stall by a small street near Lebuh Pantai, right opposite HSBC, beside Standard Chartered Bank. There aren't many cars passing by the street so it's not as dirty.

This place not as crowded as other places. It's cool as Standard Chartered is TALL, it blocks all the sun rays. There were quite a bit of people having their breakfast there (last week and this week), and you can listen to other people's conversation, if you want to :P. Somehow we felt it's peaceful, and quiet, and nice. But this is also another sign of getting older.....

Anyway, we had 2 teh ais with less sugar, one nasi lemak (my favorite!!), EG's favorite toast bread with half boiled eggs (best breakfast in the world konon :P), and a big plate of Pasembor. The pasembor is served hot as the gravy was cooked on the spot - and it is full of ingredients.

Drinks with nasi lemak, My yummy nasi lemak,
Toast bread & eggs, Pasembor

The street, the stall (see HSBC?),
Ah Pek aka my best friend with the newspaper while breakfast-ing,
Standard Chartered right opposite me.

It can be rather awkward if I keep snapping pictures while others are having their breakfast. They probably take breakfast at the same place every day, or week. Would you laugh at someone who take pics @ Mc Donald in Queensbay or One-U? Hmm... So I have to be quick in taking all these pics in the least obvious way by using my faithful handphone with 2MP camera. While EG was paying, I quickly snapped around the stalls.

The food varities - some kuih, nasi lemak, bihun, hard boiled eggs

This is where they "grill" the toast bread - how often do you see this? It's my first time though ;P

The stall

If you still wonder this place is, I took a picture of the street too. You might need to click on the pic for bigger view. It's at Union Street. And the Pasembor stall is right there.

The pasembor stall @ Lebuh Union

We had a good car park - this is the view of the famous Beach Street in Penang (Lebuh Pantai) for you to find the place

Everytime when we pass through this area, EG and I will be rather excited as this is where we took our outdoor wedding pictures (Yayaya, we still talk about it :P). On the way back home, we drove through the spot where we had one of our poses. We were rather surprised that they have renovated the place and it looked totally different now! So... no couple could take pics at that spot anymore... And now, pictures are the only memories that we have.

The new look

One of our wedding pictures - See the changes.
It's quite amusing that the poster is still there :P

EG said maybe one day we should go back to the same place and pose the same, and post it up for "spot-the-difference" game. Duh.... Anyway, I enjoyed my breakfast (Well, it should be brunch) with my only best friend in Penang - my hubby la... :P

Home Cooked Food

2008-08-11T21:42:00.013+08:00

For health reason, I have been cooking dinner almost everyday, yes, including weekdays, unless we have some appointment then we'll eat out. Everytime when I shared with my friends that I cook dinner every night after work, 99% of them will give me a very shocking face asking questions like "do you have time?", "what do you cook?", "cook for only 2 persons?", "YOU CAN COOK?!". -_-. The only one that doesn't get surprised will be my mum - who has been wanting me to do this since years ago.

I reach home daily latest by 7pm, sometimes 6.30pm. Then I'll start to take out all food from the fridge, which has been brought down from the freezer to defrost since morning. All I do is just cut all ingredients, and then cook them. There will always be a dish of vegetables, plus another main dish. Normally dinner will be ready around 7.30pm to 8pm, with all frying pans & cooking utensils washed up and kept nicely. After dinner, EG will help to clean the dishes as I wipe up the stove. By 9pm, we're done and we'll be watching tv or surfing internet.

So, I am going to share some of the dishes that I cooked for the past few days. Then maybe you'll know - why I can do it every day.

Different types of vegetables

Some dishes besides the greens
Curry fish (I know the pics looks bad :P), Plum Sauce pork ribs,
Steamed Jap Toufu, Sardine with extra ingredients

Some other varieties
Mashed potatoes, Spaghetti (EG's favorite), ABC soup & Tom Yam beehoon

We just had our mashed potatoes and spaghetti during the weekend. The mashed potatoes is so good that EG stocked up another 10 potatoes today. And it's so easy to prepare - just boil it, mashed them, mix with margerine, salt, parsley and pepper. So goooooood!

Except for the soup which needs to be boiled for at least 30 minutes to 1 hour, other dishes can be easily done within 15 to 20 minutes - approx 15 minutes to cut-up all ingredients, and 5 minutes to cook. Steamed food is the easiest and has the least hassles. Besides, it's easy to find all the ready made curry paste / tomyam paste / soup ingredients in the supermarket. This makes cooking even easier. However, I normally will go for those with no preservative (Mak Nyoya brand from Sunshine Supermarket is good :P).

I thank God that EG doesn't ask for "complicated" food. All he wants are just simple home cooked food that can fill his stomach, and thank God that he can eat almost everything that I cook. Looking the food that I prepare, it shows how simple it is - provided that your partner doesn't complain much. :P.

Relaxing Saturday

2008-08-04T22:35:00.007+08:00

We went back to Taiping last weekend. It was one of the best weekends I have had. Why? Because, EG's gaming kaki aka his brother has left to KL for college. So, I had >80% of his attention. :P

EG said he wanted to bring me to a new place in Taiping for lunch. There we went to Taiping market. It's not hot or stuffy like most of the places, but rather it has high ceiling, and it's airy. All the stalls have their own hoods to make sure the place is not smoky. Have you ever had the experience whereby others could tell where you went by smelling you? :P

The market

We order two drinks - home cooked healthy Longan & Winter melon.

Refreshing drinks @ RM1 each

I had the urge for improper food on that day, but EG was very hungry. So he ordered the famous Teochew fried kuey teow - according to him, that's the best in Taiping.

Teochew Fried Kuey Teow @ RM3

I saw a stall selling the Apam Balik that I have not been eating for almost 10 years! I remembered my parents used to buy two whole pieces whenever we went visiting my grandmother on every Saturday. That was when I was like... 12 yrs old or 15 years old?! Gosh, it's almost 15 years back!! EG said it's not called Apam Balik, not sure of the exact real name but I heard others calling it Bang Chang Kuih in Hokkien. It tasted good, but will be better if they have more peanuts. :D

Apam Balik or Bang Chang Kuih @ RM0.50 per piece.

Next, we order fried oyster and some fruits rojak. Again, EG said the fried oyster is one of the best in Taiping. For the rojak, it's good too except that it's a little weird as they put sotong in the rojak.

Fried Oyster for RM5

Fruits Rojak with Sotong @ RM3

So after all these, we are 80% full. While leaving the place, EG dropped by his grandma's neighbour's stall to buy some black soya drink - I don't normally see black soya drink around. Do you?

After that, we went to the next most happening place in Taiping - Tesco (:P) to have some "window shopping" to spend the afternoon. We were still having some craving and we bought back 12 pieces of nuggets. Yummy! And I bought one magazine from the book store.

Nuggets from KFC

We headed home after that. EG searched through Daddy's DVD and found National Treasure II by Nicholas Cage. So we watched the show, while enjoying the yummy nuggets and refreshing black soya juice. And I was also flipping through my magazines since I am blessed with multitasking skills (:P).

My new magazine

Ahh... What a beautiful, slow and relaxing Saturday afternoon... ;)

New Sleep Mate :D

2008-07-20T08:45:00.007+08:00

Hello, don't you think I look innocent? :D

After I came back from PH, I saw my doggie was replaced with a fatter, shorter and newer one. :D. It's very sweet of EG to get me a new doggie and he said it's for our 6th month anniversary present. Time flies, we have been married for 6 months - even though I feel like it has been 6 years already. :P

I am a lazy dog....

And I have a ribbon around my neck too....

I know this looks obscene but my owner said it's very cute
Because she said I am very fat...

And I have a small, short, little tail too...

Since I have a new doggie now so what should I do with my old one? My old doggie has been with me for the past 5 years. He even went to Vietnam for 11 months to be with me. And he has been there all the while - when I am happy, sad, watching series, crying, sleeping, anything. :P. But he has grown very thin after a few rounds of bathing....

Anyway, I am not going to throw it away. He'll be my TV mate... :D

PS: I am only a soft toy doggie lover, not really a real doggie lover... :P

Bubba Gump

2008-07-06T20:58:00.014+08:00

Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Restaurant & Market is a chain of seafood restaurants inspired by the movie Forrest Gump. Their menu features shrimp (of course!!), but they serve other seafood, steak and desserts. And they sell souvenirs - featuring the cute & funny shrimps, too.

In 2006, I was starving during dinner and CA brought me to this lovely restaurant. (Maybe that's the reason why I love this place since I was too hungry :P.) The restaurant provides a very relaxing and cozy environment. The friendly waiter talked to us, joked with us, and even gave us a free ice cream after my friend answered 3 questions about the Forrest Gump movie. It gave me a real good experience and impression. However, it only happened during my first visit in 2006. When I visited again in 2007 & this year, the waiters didn't behave as friendly - not sure if it's due to the big crowd as normally I'll be excited to bring all my counterparts there for dinner. Anyway, I still love the environment around the restaurant - it makes the food taste extra good. Everytime when I go Philippines for business trip, I'll make sure I'll have at least one meal @ Bubba Gump.

Food.... Yummy!!!

So far, I have seen Bubba Gump @ Kuta, Bali; Pier 39, San Francisco; Long Beach, Los Angeles. And I was overjoyed when I heard they are opening (or already opened?) @ The Curve, KL - then I can bring EG to try it there when we go KL next time! *wink*. (KL Folks, go and try it!! And then tell me if it's nice :D)

Me @ Bubba Gump Makati 2006

Me @ Bubba Gump San Francisco 2007
Excuse me for the guy next to me - he didn't bother to move!!

Me @ Bubba Gump Makati again 2008 (OK I know I grew fatter :~( )

And of course, since I am currently on business trip to PH, I went there again. And this time, I let CA's new camera captured all the corners & the deco in this lovely restaurant. I hope the Bubba Gump @ The Curve will have the same warm and cozy deco too!

Deco around the restaurant & the drink bar

Top: Some famous phrases from the movie.
Bottom: Instead of whistle loud to get the waiter, you just need to flip to Stop Forrest Stop, and they will come fast. Run Forrest Run means everything is OK.

Some stuff from the movie are all around the restaurant

Morning Light

2008-07-02T19:01:00.006+08:00

I am off to Philippines for business trip *again*. This has been the 4th time I travel here since I join the current company, and it is also going to be my 6th and 7th week here.

Not many in my office likes to come to Philippines. Simply because of the waking up time. Most of us will choose to stay at Makati - the most modern city in the country, with 5-stars hotels and nice restaurants around. However, our factory plant located at Cavite - which is probably ~50km from Makati. The problem is, there isn't highways connecting these two cities. OK, there is high way, but most of the time we were traveling on small, one way, winding roads, with kinda scary traffic. As a result, we need at least 1.5 to 2 hours to reach office.

Thank God that this round my training starts at 8am. And thank God that there's a new highway between Makati and Cavite that ensure us to reach office by 8am if we leave by 6.30am. For my previous 3 trips, I have been waking up at 4.30am to catch the shuttle at 5.15am in order to reach office at 7am. (!!!!!) Having said that, now I have to wake up latest by 5.30am to take breakfast from 6am to 6.30am - at least I can enjoy the buffet breakfast in the hotel! I used to tapao.

This morning, I snapped some pictures from my hotel room at 5.30am. In Malaysia, during this time, it will still be very dark. But here, the day gets bright early, and of course it gets dark early too. Most of the peolpe here wake up by 5am+, and sleep at 10pm+. And most of their shopping malls close ~9pm.

The view right opposite my room

Left side

Right side

I still have 10 days here. Thank God again that when I reach back Penang, it'll be a long weekend as Monday is a Holiday. I will have all my time for my beauty sleeeeeeeeeeep.... :)

Cat-Mails?

2008-06-27T16:52:00.005+08:00

I think most of us are working with free internet in office. It makes communication so much easier. EG and I basically send email mainly to disturb each other almost everyday.

Somehow, one day we got bored of just plain words, and we started to email each other with our own LOL-CAT. I am not going to tell who wrote what, so you can guess yourself. But i thought they were funny.... :D

And finally, this is the one that I like the most. I think this is really funny. We were supposed to leave office early and there's this "stupid" reminder came to my inbox.

It does help to release stress a bit... but I think we are crazy.... :P

Simba

2008-06-24T23:41:00.009+08:00

I am not an animal lover, but EG is. He has been telling me how graceful, nice, funny, cute, mischevious, etc etc, about all the cats around him - be it the neighbour's cat, or the stray cats on the streets. Under such influence for the past 3 years+, I become more "senstive" for cats too.

O Hai! My name is Simba. :)

To cut the story short - EG's colleague is putting one of his cats, Simba, out for adoption. You may refer to EG's blog for more details. We couldn't take him due to space constraint of our current place. If you are interested, or any of your friends are interested, do drop your contact in the comment.

PS: Simba is currently @ Penang.

让自己。。。透透气

2008-06-19T19:59:00.005+08:00

现代都市新新人类
为了生活为了将来
为了享受将来富裕的生活
每天努力工作努力赚钱
努力的和时间赛跑
努力的利用一天内24小时
为的是希望将来能丰衣足食

周遭的人们
天天在很忙的工作
很忙的开会
很忙的做生意
很忙的赚钱
很忙的。。。。

然后通货膨胀百物涨价
所有人在讶异之余不断的投诉后
又在更努力的工作
更努力的赚钱
更努力的利用24小时

当现实的压力越来越沉重
人们就更麻木不仁的生活
没有生动的表情
没有开心的笑容
生无可恋死不足惜

也许应该放慢脚步
让自己透透气
让日子元气恢复
然后
在珍惜生活中的每一天之余
再慢慢细嚼人生真正的意义

加油！

2008-05-29T21:44:00.001+08:00

很久了。。很想写一些有关最近天灾的感想

无奈心痛沮丧无言
每天看到
一张张震撼人心的相片
一则则令人感动万分的新闻

眼眶红了沮丧了很久久久不能自己

当我们在安安稳稳的工作平平安安的生活
快快乐乐的享受每一餐
反观在离我们不远的另一端
千万人们在为生命奋斗牺牲彼此鼓励安慰

当我们在为生活中的琐碎事不开心时
当我们为身边一切感到不满时
也许应该知道如何知足常乐
更应该好好珍惜身边人

愿在无情天灾中生存下来的人加油！

Cooking Weekend again

2008-05-12T22:51:00.008+08:00

Since we ate out last weekend, trying to be a nice wife, I promised EG I'll cook for him this weekend, voluntarily. :P.

During our visit to Pastamania last weekend, we wanted to order Aglio Olio, but the waiter told us it'll just be pasta with parsley, garlic and olive oil. So, we chose another meal instead. Since we have left over Pasta at home, I surfed net and found that Aglio Olio is really quite easy to be done. To make it nicer, I also prepared the spicy prawns to go together with the pasta.

In the original recipe, I'm supposed to use the chili flakes. To be more cost effective (since I won't use it too often), I replaced with our local cili padi. :D. I combined the cleaned & deveined prawns with the ingredients shown below.

Prawns with the other ingredients, including olive oil (forgot to label ;P)

I cooked the pasta to al-dente. On the non-stick pan, put the prawns in for ~3 minutes. Then, fry the garlic and chilis (hoping to add some spice) with lots of olive oil. Toss the pasta with the garlic oil and parsley. Put them on plates, and serve with prawns on top. And done!

My Aglio Olio

Looks good? However, it didn't taste very good though. It tasted a little flat. I think it would taste nicer if we have some parmeson cheese. Or I should have poured the remaining lemon juiced used for the prawn into the pasta. Need to improve for next cook.

On Sunday, I followed the recipe from Hochiak! with the remaining pork rib that I purposely left over for this - that's why the carrots & onions look more than the pork rib. :P.

Pork Ribs in Plum Sauce

The pork ribs tasted very good - even though they are a bit small pieces cause it's supposed to be meant for soup. :P. However, the gravy is too sweet. Not sure if it's because of the plum sauce that I bought (it said it can be made for drinks too) or I put too much of them? Too much sugar? And not enough corn flour so it's a bit watery. :P.

Anyway, EG still loves it and suggested me to cook for his parents when we're back to Taiping this weekend. *Gulp*. I am still considering and I don't think so. I am not used to cook for others except for him.

I broke my record this weekend as I cooked for 4 meals for both Saturday & Sundays (we skipped breakfast since waking up late :P). I was hell tired and suffering from muscle pain from the hiking of my team building - I'll blog about this later - I could hardly walk. I insisted that a promise is a promise. Imagine me limping around in the house. Yet, after cooking, I have to do most of the washing as EG was busy with his guitar practice and work, and being lazy. -_-".

I start to understand why my mum would lose her mind when we complaint her cooking was not nice or complaint that she cooked the same food everyday. Cooking is not as easy as I thought when it becomes a chore!

So, EG used to ask me if I could cook everyday if we have to stop food catering one day. I tried to imagine if I have to think what to cook after a tiring day at work - Cooking is still ok, but the washing part. Hmm... I think I really need to think about this before I simply say yes... :P

Crossword

2008-05-05T22:40:00.005+08:00

I couldn't believe it!!!!

I actually solved the Crossword puzzle published on our employee portal. This could probably be my only solved crossword puzzle in my whole life!

I am hopeless in all the techie-stuff going on in my company - well, call me ignorant. All I care are only the Oracle Databases and SQL. Not sure what kept me go-on to finish off this puzzle - might be the flu pills. :P. There's a check button that you could click to check for your answers - every right answer kept me awake!

EG helped me to solve 70% of the puzzle. I always know he is quite smart, just that tonight I found out he exceeds my expectation and he is really smart... :D

PS: This is not a competition la. Just for fun only. So I got nothing for completing this, except a little bit of self satisfaction and add on a bit more knowledge about my employer... Hmmm... :P

Relaxing Weekend

2008-05-04T23:31:00.010+08:00

It's such a relaxing weekend....

Both EG and I have not been going out for a date much since our wedding as we're busy with so many things. When we have free time, we'll rather stay at home and get chilled. :P. This weekend, both of us have some movie and shopping urge. We decided to go out this weekend.

It has been a super long time since both me and EG went for a movie. I think the last movie that we watched was, probably, Transformer. Kinda pathetic right? Well there isn't much movies that really interest us. On Friday night, we went to watch Ironman. I am not a very good movie reviewer but this is a nice show. The movie is about 2 hours but I didn't feel it at all. Overall it's a fuuny, great & interesting movie.

On Saturday, after we attended Marriage Tune-up session in EPCC (Pastor called it an after-sales service :P), we headed to town straight. I have a long list of shopping stuffs to get.

Mother's day is around the corner. However, in my hometown, we don't celebrate Mother's Day but rather, we celebrate Parent's Day. This year, my siblings and I have decided to get a camera for my parents since they are now using our first digital camera bought in 2002 with 3.2 megapixel Canon Ixus V3 and probably 1.2" screen. My job is to get the Panasonic Lumix FX36. Sometimes I love Penang because if you find the right place, you'll get good discount!

After getting the camera, we headed to Gurney plaza.

We were taking our own sweet time walking floor by floor at Gurney. And somehow, we couldn't find much things to buy. We stumbled into S&J - one of the famous gift shops in Penang. As usual, they have some funny and cute stuff and EG was having fun talking to the little cute salesgirl asking about their products. :P. When we came out from the shop, we bought two cute wrist rests to put in our office. EG took some closed up pics and talked about it here.

One for me, one for him

After some window shopping, we wanted to go Chillis for a nice dinner but we saw new restaurant poster with nice Pastas so we decided to go for a try. At first I thought Pastamania is a local restaurant, but later I found out it's actually a franchise. We were very hungry so we ordered a pasta, pizza, garlic bread & minestrone soup - and we finished all of them. Yummy!! It was a right decision to change our mind to go for Pastamania. The food was very good and we both felt very satisfied - I am not sure if it's because we were too hungry though. :P.

Hot Minestrone Soup

Garlic Bread

The cheesy sausage tasted sooo good... I feel hungry looking at this picture...

This Super Supreme tasted real good as it's full of salami and chicken ham. Yummy!!

We walked a bit to help on digestion after dinner and headed home. Besides all the things that we bought, I got two blisters at my small little toes too. Not sure if it's because of the new shoes, or it's because I haven't been walking so much for quite a long time.

Today, we wrapped up the camera box for me to post it all the way back to Sarawak tomorrow.

Gift for my parents

After wrapping up - it's water proof & shock absorbing, I hope.
My drawing is not bad right? :P

Let's pray that it'll reach Miri safely. I am trying to imagine my dad's grinning face when he receives this. :P

I like my weekend so much, but reality is, I have to work tomorrow. -_-"

Ganbatte-neh.

MNG Voucher

2008-04-26T12:35:00.006+08:00

I support manufacturing operations in my daily job. It's not a very nice job as you might get calls during off office hour, but it's challenging.

There ought to be many issues or problems in manufacturing, and when we solve it, we'll get recognitions - esp if it has a big impact. Normally I get RM10 Sunshine Vouchers or KFC Vouchers, but this round, I was lucky that I got 2 x USD25 cash vouchers. I redeemed a RM50 body shop voucher, and a RM100 MNG voucher.

The redemption was done online. I got the body shop voucher in a week and I used it straight away on that weekend on a foundation that I have been eyeing for almost 6 months. So no picture of it.

For the MNG one, I was waiting and waiting for almost a month but it never comes. Everytime when EG checked our mailbox i'll be asking anxiously if there's a MNG voucher. And finally, the long awaited voucher finally came yesterday.

I was expecting the cash voucher to come in a piece of card board with MNG logo, and written with RM100 or something like that. But it's not. It's a very nice small card.

Front of the cash voucher

Voucher worth NYR 100. What's NYR? :P

It came with a big envelop

One thing that I don't understand - why do they have to post it from Australia??

Anyway, it's TIME FOR SHOPPING!!!

High Heels?

2008-04-24T21:39:00.004+08:00

Most girls like to wear high heels. Heels make us prettier, slimmer, sexier, classier.

I knew high heels are not good for girls - because there's what everyone says. Until recently I got a forwarded email that explains it. I thought it's good to share.

Click the below image for larger view.

Baby's name

2008-04-17T21:49:00.006+08:00

After I am married, most people will ask me two questions whenever they see me.

1. So, how's your married life? Standard answer - Good.
2. So, when are you planning to have your baby? Standard answer - not yet.

I got so tired answering these questions.

As age is catching up, most of my friends are all moving onto the next stage of their lives - getting married. Then, next, have or going to have their first baby, some are already on their ways getting their 2nd baby. A lot of my friends from church, university or schools are pregnant, and a few of them have already delivered.

I found out all kids have quite canggih names nowadays. It triggers me to think, what would I name my children when I have them next time?

I stumbled into babynamesworld while being busy-body to help a friend to choose an English name for his coming daughter. So, I started to surf for my future kid's names too.

For girl, I like the name Sarah. It means Princess. In the Old testament in Bible, Sarah was a very pretty lady even when she was 60+ years old. For boy, it's hard to get a name as there are so many boys in my church. Most nice names are taken - Josh, Sean, Isaac, etc etc. Finally, I found Ethan. It's also a hebrew name means strong and optimistic, solid and enduring.

My suggestion & proposal was approved by EG. So our future kids' names will be Ethan & Sarah.

For the chinese names, it's much harder to think of a meaningful name. So I'll just take it easy as time comes. My friend sent me a list of chinese names with surnames and I am not in the mood to go through them yet. :P

For my friends, if you're planning for your kids, please remember that I have reserved these two names, ok? It might be confusing later if our kids have the same names. :P. *I am just kidding*

By the way, this doesn't mean that we're ready for babies.

No, we're not ready.

So stop asking!!

Bear & Cat Talk

2008-04-17T21:43:00.008+08:00

Bear and Cat were reading some posts in a forum... A girl wrote that she was too tired and she rested her head on the hubby's shoulder while he was driving, and the hubby drove with one hand with another free hand holding her hand.

Cat: Wahhhh.... So Sweet!!!!
Bear: Ya lo... U never do that to me also...!!!
Cat: Hahahaha....
Bear: Oh I know already, You can't do that because... U know why??
Cat: Why?
Bear: (Trying to be smart) Because you're not driving an auto car!! You're driving a manual car so you have no free hand to hold my hand!! Right...?
Cat: (Showing cheeky face) No no dear.. U know why... Coz you're too small size and you won't be able to rest on my shoulder in my car... And maybe that fella drives a smaller car like Kancil leh...
Bear: -_-"
Cat: Do you agree? Do you agree?
Bear: NOOOOOO
Cat: Hahahaha... Is it funny? Is it funny???
Bear: NOOOOOOO
Cat: IT IS FUNNY laaa.....

*FAINT*. Stupid Cat.

Cry Baby

2008-04-11T22:53:00.009+08:00

There are a few ways that can make my hubby a happy man, one of them is to let him spend some "investment" in his hobby - guitar, so that he won't complain he has no life.

Some of you might start to imagine a quite handsome man with his guitar, singing love songs from David Tao or Jay Chou to his love one, so romantic. **POOOFFFF**. Wake Up! So far, I don't remember EG singing to me because he doesn't play or sing pop songs. He plays jazz, rock, and blues - which sometimes make me really blue. Mind you, these songs normally have no lyrics and too bad I don't really appreciate much of these kind of music. Our tastes in music is totally opposite.

Getting to the main point, EG has been buying a lot of effect pedals from some online forum with some good deals. Recently, he found this WAH-Pedal - which he has been talking about for the past year but never buys because of the high price - going at almost 30% off the market price in the forum. He asked for my permission, and placed his order. 2 days later, he got his beloved pedal posted to him. He was so so so excited that he actually brought it out and showed me when we went out for lunch today.

Of course, he couldn't wait to try out this new baby with his electric guitar when he reached home. He has been telling me so much about this pedal by making the "wah-wah" sound effect, and to my surprise, it sounds exactly the same when he plays the guitar today. (Make a search in youtube - you can find hundreds of video of a wah-pedal). It sounds funny, like a cat trying to talk. :P

I am sure he'll write something about this new baby once he finishes trying it out. I'll then link to his blog if you're interested to know more about this funny pedal (it might take some times though). To let you know how excited he is, I took some pics of him posing with his new baby. However, I have to do something with the pictures in order to protect his privacy or reputation or innocence or whatever-you-call-it. Enjoy!!

It's also called cry baby because it sounds like a baby crying

I guess he might want to sleep with his new baby tonight! :P

My Weekend

2008-04-06T19:39:00.004+08:00

The long awaited weekend has finally reached. I am excited for weekend as I can cook! To improve my cooking skills, I have been reading and surfing around for simple recipes. I have quite some restrictions in my kitchen, for i.e. can't do much fryings, can't make the kitchen too oily / dirty, etc. So I have to make sure the recipes are simple and easy to manage so that I won't get banned from cooking. :P. I found this GREAT website - Hochiak! Delicious Asian Food. This website is really very helpful as I am and can never be creative. Hence, I can't do much even if I have food in the fridge. I need some guidance. I started to get really excited to try his (yes, it's a HE!) recipes in my own kitchen.

When we went back home last weekend, my mummy (mum in law) gave me an old cucumber, some pork and minced pork. So of course - u know what I am going to cook - old cucumber soup. Cut up everything and just boil them together. Normally I don't put red dates but the recipes in Hochiak! does, so I tried. Yummy!

A friend gave us a packet of chinese mushroom during CNY. Except cooking chicken soup with that, I have no idea what I could do with it (now you know how not creative / boring I am). Again, in the same Hochiak! website, I was excited to see that I can use the mushrooms to cook siew pak choy with braised mushrooms! Well, as a beginner in cook and since I don't cook all the time, I only have oyster sauce. So, I tried the recipe with only oyster sauce and YUMMY! It's still YUMMY!

We kept the other half pot of the soup for the next day. And I have been cracking my head to think what to cook as the 2nd dish for dinner on Sunday since last week. We have quite a lot of celery left from the spag cooking last 2 weeks, so today I cut all the celery, some carrots, and fry them together with a little bit of minced garlic and minced pork. Looks not bad right? Taste good too~!

Now, I realised cooking is not as hard as I thought, and it's really fun. The satisfaction comes when EG tells me how much he likes the food. His encouragements never fail to boost my confidence, vice versa (:P). My boss has been telling others that I am happily married - u know why? Because I put on weight! Now you know how and why!! We have to finish all food so that it's not wasted!

Anyway, weekend is going to be over soon too! Time always flies faster during weekends. I wanted to try another recipe next week but EG is craving for spag again! Guess I won't be posting up any of my kitchen work next week - unless he changes his mind! I will have to do my homework and surf to see how I can improve from the last cooking.

T.G.I.Friday

2008-04-04T17:24:00.005+08:00

I bet everyone who works 5 days a week long for Fridays. I am no exception.

Reasons that I love Fridays:
1. There will normally be no late meetings. All meetings will end by 4pm because everyone wants to go home early, claiming to beat the traffic jam.
2. There's long lunch hour. You can go for 2 hours lunch with NO GUILT. No one will question you for coming back office late.
3. All work can be delayed to next week.
4. You can leave as early as 4.30pm esp. IF you need to cross PG bridge, or even if you don't (as long as you don't explain :P)
5. Finally you can take a break after working for 5 days = at least 40 hours.
6. Weekend is around the corner. I can wait to slouch in home's sofa while watching series, explore something in kitchen and do anything that's not related to work.

I normally feel extra refresh on Fridays, because it's Friday. Very often, I'll ask EG on Thursday night on what to eat for lunch on Fridays! I can go to the same economy rice stalls for lunch from Mon to Thurs, but not on Fridays. I want to have nice and relaxing lunch - not necessary expensive - but something that we don't normally eat everyday - maybe some shops that we haven't been for few weeks, or something different, anything.

Sometimes, EG says, Let's eat in today.
I will be like... "Huhhhhh....... today is FRIDAY u know...... I need some life.....!"
So eating in cafe on Fridays in a BIG NO NO for me, unless there is some unforeseen circumstances.

I know this sounds like a psychological thing, but if I don't have a nice lunch break on Friday, I'll feel so sad for myself. I feel like as if no one loves or cares for me, or my life is so meaningless. This can make me feel demotivated and bored at work, and it can carry on till weekends. Scary right?

I am still trying to explore myself more on this... But does anyone out there feel this too?

Anyway, WEEKEND IS HERE!! I am so excited. I have a long list of activities for this weekend. And I also have the lunch & dinner menu ready for the weekends . *I am addicted to cooking now*.

Stay tune for my next post! :)