Happy Birthday

EG and I don't really celebrate birthdays, valentine days, anniversaries or any special event. We normally just stay at home and spend time with each other - watching tv, or doing housework. We don't like the crowd - probably a sign of getting old? Some think that we're really weird couple but I am perfectly OK with this. We are already doing or experiencing new things together always so I thought there's no need to do extra on special events.

However, this year, it's a little different. EG has decided to bring me for some nice dinner on Christmas day - a day before my birthday. I am not sure why. Probably we both wanted to take a break after we completed our wedding reception in Miri (50% of work done!!). And probably EG wanted to treat his girlfriend (still) real nice before we both upgrade our status to husband and wife in less than 1 month time!!

Tao Christmas Decoration

EG has been to Tao restaurant for his teambuilding and he always wanted to bring me there. Since both of us like Japanese food, we decided to try their japanese buffet @ eGate today. Good that even though it's Christmas, the rate remains. And we're free to order anything in the menu.

Tao Menu

Both of us had a heavy breakfast today and we skipped lunch. EG placed our booking while I was having my afternoon nap. There are two sessions for the jap buffet, i.e. from 5.30pm - 8.15pm and from 8.30pm - 11.15pm respectively. To fight off the crowd and the traffic, we reached Tao sharp at 5.30pm with our empty stomach.

Waiting for food

Since both EG and I are small eater, we have to be smart to order the food so that we can try different varieties and fully utilise the $$ that we paid (yaya, call us cheapskate :P). We avoided the dish served with rice or mee. We started our meal with Miso soup, and followed by two big plates of sushi with soft shell crab.

Spider sushi and Fire Cracker sushi

I am not going to describe all the food as those are quite a standard japanese food. Below are some of the pictures that I took during the dinner.

Both EG and I are big fans for grilled salmon.
We ordered total of 3 plates of grilled salmon during the dinner

Yummy sashimi

Scallop with cheese - it is a little too cheesy


Their chawanmushi is really small

EG is enjoying his food

Since it's Christmas, all tables are served with a free Christmas meal. It's nothing too great but it tasted ok.

Complementary Christmas meal

In total, we ate 23 items from the menu (some are repeating). Finally, we ended our dinner with a green tea ice cream. I was too full to eat anything so EG finished it off.

Green Tea ice cream

After the dinner, we were really full. Initially, we wanted to get a piece of cake from Secret Recipe next door as my birthday cake but I told EG I really couldn't take it anymore so we cancelled our plan.

Finally, you must be wondering where my birthday present is. Well, we don't normally give each other surprises for presents to avoid any disappointment (:P). We choose our own presents. So, I chose a handbag this year while we were doing some window shopping in Midvalley during our 9 hours flight transit to come back to Penang last Sunday.

My birthday present

I always tell EG that he's very lucky as I am quite an easily pleased girlfriend. This is my 3rd birthday together with EG. A simple present with a nice dinner like this are more than enough to make my day.

It's a great day!