chinese new year - roaring tiger

wellll wellll wellll...chinese new year has come and chap goh mei (the 15th day of cny and also the last day) is just round the corner. before this, everyone was busy doing house cleaning or spring cleaning while looking forward to the celebration. AS for me, i have started my shopping earlier (kiasu, maybe) for my children.... believe or not in December 2009.....dont like to rush with others and also more relaxing pace. we dont really have to q for the fitting rooms nor at the payout counter. Most importantly, no rush during meal time and we can actually enjoy the food while admiring what we had bought. with the children growing up, have to bring them along to see if they fit the clothes and most important - wearing them. !!

Anyway, cny biscuits is also a must even though we are not expecting a lot of visitors. Furthermore, guests / relatives that comes visiting wont be eating much... . This year, my biscuits collection - peanut, green peas, love letters, murukus, arrow head, samprik, "dragon eye" pistachio biscuit. looking at my biscuit collection, this year my biscuits are on the nutty end..hehehe.... i bought one of each but some was given to me. I shared with mum as firstly not to waste food and secondly, after the cny is over, mum will end up trying to finish the biscuits as she refuses to waste or throw away food. While trying to finish the biscuits, she will be grumbling about it and making a point telling me not to buy too many for next year !! I tend to overbuy sometimes lah. This year is slightly different as both my children are growing up and they have a bigger appetites and before u know....some of the biscuits are disappearing fast or even gone....

Chinese new year is also eating spree for all of us. I have been eating and doing the yee sang toss before cny and will continue till the 15th day........ My dinners venue from Port village seafood, Sg. Yu Baru, V garden, hong tat, hwa wei steamboat, Ya Lim seafood, govind too.... eating and eating and eating..... till my stomach is bloated or spare tyre is out hehehe... Mostly, seafood and rich seafood. Can you imagine the amount of food is consume before and during the cny holidays. Mostly all the restaurants are packed to brim and without any reservations made, u will have to wait or shoo off without any guilty face from the owner. well without any guilt on eating, i will probably go on diet after this.

After this, I will be looking forward to dieting.......

S limming s...

Ruppiah Millionaires :)

Since S resuscitated the blog i thought I'd do my part as well and give it another boost of vitamins! Let's hope that new posts will make the blog get up and parade in the cyber world! ( fat hopes! No one comes in to read it anymore anyway! ~ Not even me!)

CNY is just about to end in a few days and with the holidays all over and done with, we have to look forward to some other distractions. For the Fems, Bandung will be the next de-stressing destination. That will happen in April and hopefully all will go well.

A friend of mine just got back from that so-called shopping paradise and i was eager to ask her how it all went. Its her first time there , with her 3 kids ( who are more like young adults really). Even tho this April trip will be the 3rd for me , i still like to ask for their opinions. She said that they did not enjoy the shopping at all. She (the same age as us Fems) did not find anything appropriate to buy. She did not get nice T shirts nor working clothes. There were lots of evening dresses there but she is not into those. Her daughter who is 25 i think did not enjoy the shopping either. I was quite shocked cuz i shopped for my daughters and they seemed to like what i got for them.(unless they were just pretending !!) Her 2 sons didn't buy much either , one of them claimed that they aren't original goods!

I did my share of "investigating" and found that some people came back with very good comments and these are the ones who went crazy shopping. ( i know the Fems did!) And then there are those who said that there was NOTHING to buy there!!!! So i guess "one man's meat is another man's poison." For me that last 2 trips there were fruitful. But then i am a compulsive shopaholic so don't take my word for it LOL .

I believe we may have a day of sight seeing this time around and my 1st time there i did visit the volcanoes and it was not bad! Oh , and my friend who just came back from Bandung said that she enjoyed the sight seeing a lot :) As for the food, their personal chauffeur told my friend to never never eat anything raw eg. Gado-Gado. I had a very bad case of food poisoning there on my 1st trip so i was extra careful on my 2nd. They ate a lot of meals at shopping malls and were recommended to eat only steaming hot food. She recommended this place that's situated smack in the middle of a padi field called Sapulidi. Its suppose to be really good so let's make sure we try that , Fems. The brownies there are to die for!!!! Much better than the Amanda ones. In fact she also recommends the Kartika cakes. So let's start the countdown and start saving up those Ruppiahs now!!! :) We will be Ruppiah millionaires by April !!!
E-arly Excitement

animation

how do you like the photo / drawing ?? Nowadays, children have endless choices of movies, cartoons that they can watch..... the in nowadays... animation...... ...... during our time, we only have mickey mouse, donald duck, daffy duck and we all grown up loving them... i still do ......

wat about you ??

s

The new look

First of all , Happy New Year to the Fems :) This is the 1st post of 2010 :) Hopefully we will be more productive and creative this year and may we not have any writers' block !!! i don't want to be the one who hogs this blog so please, fems , contribute soon.
I just want to explain about the new look in this blog. It wasn't done on purpose. I was very contented with the old look as it was pretty and bold. But when i logged in a week ago i saw that it looked weird. There was this distorted look on the left side. A message appeared repeatedly informing me that there was some overload in the image. An ad on the Photo bucket came up and no matter how i tried to salvage it , nothing brought me back to the old look :(
I left the blog for a few hours and then came back to it and still it was the same distorted vision. Sigh, i was left with no choice but to try and get a more presentable template. But it was late in the night and i was tired, so i hurriedly picked a simple one that came in my fave colour ~ Blue :)
When i got that done, i was determined to make it a little more special so it didn't just look too generic. The animated fishes caught my eye so i added that in. If u move the cursor over the "water" the fishes will follow it , and u can even feed the fishes by clicking on the background and fish food will appear :) Have fun.
I will try to improve on it when i do get some free time. In the mean time , u can all try and create better layouts :) Feel free to experiment , and u will find that its fun and challenging. Good luck :)
E-xperiments

My Red & White party

Its been 2 years since i had my last line dance party and my "students" were bugging me to organize another. I had dragged it for half a year and finally succumbed to the pressure! So i chose a date , picked a venue , decided on the theme and printed the tickets.


It was basically a one man show but i managed to pull it thru. I was aiming for 30 people but in the end , more than 60 showed up. The Watsons sales came on time and i managed to get 60 door gifts at a very fair price. And the prizes for the night were also from Watsons.

The venue was an easy choice as i like the ambiance it provided. The Botanic Resort Club is easily accessible and beautifully designed. And the management was nice enough to provide a reasonably presentable backdrop with a choice of 40 characters free of charge. They also provided a music technician to handle the audio system.

The food left much to be desired as they seem to provide less than what we had paid for. They said that they will top up once the food is eaten up but they were slow. It was a good thing that i persuaded them to allow me to bring in some outside food . Our portions were a lot more satisfying that the ones the resort was handing out!! I think the dancing was satisfactory and we all had fun. ( i know i did!) But most of all , i am just glad its over! Phew!
E-asy Peasy party

More Thai Food

Dunkin Donut in Thailand
Pretty Donuts
Pork Chop in Sizzler's
Yummy pork
Fish yummy too :)

Thai Food !!

Dec 3rd was a day i was longing for since my girls went back to their faraway Universities. It wasn't really planned very much in advance. We had wanted to take a trip to some other places like Taiwan and Hanoi came to mind but Airasia was not giving very good fares for the dates we wanted to travel so it was back to the regular haunt in the south of Thailand.

Hatyai is a place we never get tired of going. The shopping is good, the hotels are comfortable, the local tuk tuks make every food haven and shopping complex easily accessible and the food is to die for!!!! And to prove that last point, here are pics for u to drool over!


Duck noodles










Tom Yum Kung and below it : Grilled Mackerel














Sotong with delicious sauce and below : Salad with fire burning chilli sauce