The birthday before the big "three-O"

Another birthday, another year...
the one before the big "three-O" .

No surprises, nothing fancy.
Simple dinner with mom and sis, ordered our favourite food - udang masak petai, sotong masak merah, kailan masak ikan masin (i'm salivating as i write this haha), and ais kacang for dessert.

I like the cake. It appears good on pictures. Matches my apple-green finger nail polish :P

Plus One Shabu Shabu @ Imbi

I haven't been blogging about food for a long time. I thought I should blog about this place - Plus One Shabu Shabu.

As the name implies, it's all about shabu shabu (steamboat) - Hong Kong style. Personally, I don't know what's so hongkie about it. The ingredients looks kinda same to me. Looks like the selling point about the food is the soup. Well, I guess that's something hongkie.

To start with, you get to order your own small pot of shabu shabu with the soup of your choice. Otherwise you can also order one big pot and share with your food buddies. There are many choices to choose from eg. Pepper Pork & Salty Veg soup, Chinese Herbal soup, Tom Yam, Miso, Shark's bone soup etc. Then you order the raw ingredients for your own "cooking".

There's also a counter which you could pick the sauces to go with your food e.g chillies, garlic, chives, thai sweet sour sauce...just to name a few.

I think the "personal pot" thingy is more hygienic plus you get to choose your own soup base. The place is air-conditioned with nice ambience. The price is mid range, parking is also convenient. You can just park at the parking lot beside the restaurant.

There currently have 2 outlets:
KL (beside Imbi Palace Restaurant)
No. 20-22, Jalan Barat Off Jln Imbi.

Another one at:
Petaling Jaya
Lot F 337-338, Rain Forest,
1st Floor, 1 Utama Shopping Centre (new Wing).

So if you feel like "shabu-shabu-ing", give it a try :)

My W photos (preview)

Here's a preview of the wedding photos of yours truly...

"Proposing"at the train station













Intimate moment in the "woods"









HK's neon lights backdrop

My custom made shoes are here!

Tadaa!!! This is the pink shoes I ordered from HK. I love the heels! I had to fork out extra to have that gold stainless steel heels haha... well, it's reusable. The shop assistant told me that if the shoes have worn out, you can bring the heels back to the shop for another new pair of shoes. How cool is that! Well, not that I'll return to HK for another pair soon. haha..

Rojak and cendol delight in a hot afternoon

Today, I thought of the Indian uncle's rojak and cendol stall near my house.
It wasn't because of I was hungry ( I just had lunch then, mind you).

I recall months ago I was enjoying an afternoon snack at the stall with N.
It was a hot afternoon. Nothing fancy about the food.
But the cendol was cold and refreshing under the hot afternoon sun.

No candle lights dinner nor romantic song, but both of us enjoyed slurping the food and laughed ourselves silly.

...Simple things in life can bring much happiness.

Psst..if you want to know which stall I'm mentioning, ajak me for rojak/cendol anytime hahaha...

*I'm looking forward to N's return for our next visit to the stall :P

Ordering my first pair of custom made shoes

Psst..did I tell you I just ordered a custom made shoes from HK?

I thought I would just buy off the shelf, but the temptation was too hard to resist!

I just had to choose the shoes pattern, the colour, the straps, the heels (height & design) and specify my design of the add-on shoes accessories, have my foot measurement taken, pay a deposit..and the shoes will be ready in about 10 days!

Wow~ I didn't know it would be so easy to have your shoes custom made. And you have so many choices to choose from. Practically almost every shoes shop at the Golden Plaza (Prince Edward Street) can custom make your shoes. And the price starts around HKD260 for a pair of plain shoes. Think of it, you could even order the shoes for any formal occassion or even dancing!

I can only get my feet in it this coming November when I'm going to visit HK for the 4th time :D
I just wished Malaysia had more of these shops...*-*

Pre-wedding photo shoot in HK (Sept-17)

We got the photo shoot package from this shop (MyDreamWedding) in HK.

* Read about our pre-wedding photo shoot package hunt

All in all, we had these in our package:
- 50 photos (including softcopy in a DVD)
- 1 big photo with frame (for putting above the couple's bed)
- 1 medium size photo with frame
- 1 small size photo with frame
- 1 big photo album (for 50 pics, including touching up photos & artwork)
- 2 small photo albums (abt 4R size).
- 3 gowns for the lady
- 2 suits for the guy
- hand flower bouquet
- photo shoot props included
- a crew for the shooting day (1 photographer, 1 photographer assistant, 1 driver & 1 makeup artist)
- transportation to any three locations in HK for photo shoot (fuel & tolls included)
- abt 20+ handouts mini photos to ji-muis (I can't recall how many exactly)
- 1 HKD4000 coupon which we used to redeem for additional photos for a total up 50 pics
- 1 free set of accessories (bling-bling necklace & earrings)

And all these costs abt RM6.5K. We do not need to pay any additional charges provided that we do stick to 50 photos limit.

On that day itself, I brought my bustier and contoured undies (don't know if this is the right term to use). And also my high heels, and the proposal bouquet of little teddies as the only personal prop. No makeup is necessary, and you are supposed to wear a front button down blouse (to avoid messing up your makeup & hairdo when changing into the gowns).

We reached the shop at 11am, took an hour to "transform" me into a doe-eyed princess, but only 10 minutes to turn my "frog prince" into a handsome prince :P Then we were ready to set out around 12:15pm.

These were the photo shoot locations:
1. TaiPo train museum
2. Nam Sang Wai (a wetland area in Yuen Long, supposedly a popular place for movie/tv shoots, but i didn't see any movie stars while we were there)
3. HK Central (the glitzy-blitzy city center with all the shopping boutiques & a neon lighted buildings as backdrop).

It was lucky for us we had clear skies for all shooting locations. Though the weather was a tad too humid for us. I was practically melting! Plus sitting in the car with a tight bustier clusping your breast until you can barely breath...and the bumpy ride.. it was torture to me. I felt sick and vomitted before our last shooting location. But the show must go on. I felt much better after that, but my feet was aching by then.

There were these curious eyes from the people on the streets, looking at us when we posed in the middle of the street, with spot lights and a crew..woo~ I tell you...for a second, you would think you are the movie star! Or perhaps doing a shoot for a glossy fashion magazine.

I tried to smile as "sweetly" as possible. You know, smiling all day does cramp up your cheeks & lip. So I force myself to think happy thoughts, and smile! You can't really fake a smile, it looks horrendous on the photos! We finally finished the shooting around 8pm. Then we headed back to the bridal shop to return the dresses.

4 days after that, we returned to choose the 50 photos. We were quite pleased with the photos. Well, it does resemble what we saw in their portfolio albumns with those pretty models. I thought we both make a cute couple in those photos :P We took about an hour to finish browsing the photos, 15 mins to select from the first location shoot, another 15 mins for the second, and about 30 mins for the last location. Then another 45 minutes to review the selection, choose the photos to be enlarged, choose the photo frames, and finally choose photos for the mini-printouts.

So we now wait till year end to get our hands on the final results.

Phew...that was one big item off our To-Do list :D

Trip to Cheung Chau (HK)

I was spending my last weekend in HK, so N organised a trip to Cheung Chau island. It is one of the outlying islands in south of HK island. Mainly a fishing village there, so our plan was to enjoy a seafood dinner after a tour around the island.

We started off with a traditional Dim Sum lunch at Lin Heung Lou Restaurant in SheungWan. If I remember correctly, you should get out from SheungWan MTR Exit to get to this place. After lunch, we walked to the Central Pier to board the ferry to CheungChau. The ferry service to CheungChau is at Pier 5.

The weather was extremely hot and humid on that sunny Saturday afternoon. It made us (well, at least myself) sweated like icecream in the oven. Nothing much for sightseeing on the island - fishing boats, chinese temple, beach, ancient drawings on rock. I thought Malaysian beaches are much more nicer :P

For me, the best part of the trip was the food! After the stroll at the beach, we tried out the local delicacies - big fishballs (zha yu dan), tau foo fa & red bean paste biscuit (hong dau peng). We also tried the "taro swirl", which were commonly sold on the island. That was as tasty as your best potato chips, and there were many varieties of flavouring to choose from.

We then strolled along the main road of the island (the road infront of the ferry pier), searching for a nice restaurant for dinner. We decide on New Baccarat Restaurant (since it was recommended in LonelyPlanet guide). This restaurant occupies the last two shops in the row of seafood restaurants (near the Pak Tai temple's end / walk towards the leftmost of the street after coming out fr the ferry pier).

The food was cheap, with lots of dishes to boast - prawns, crabs, lai niu ha, soup, vege, clams, fish, pork, squids. It costs us abt HKD540 for 8 persons (abt RM242). Too bad I didn't take a photo of the dinner dishes :P

On our return journey from HK island to TsimSaTsui, instead of taking MTR, we boarded the Star Ferry across the harbour to enjoy the night scene of HK. It was a first time experience for me - short & nice. So here are some photos to share...


views from Pier










views near Cheung Chau Pier

Pak Tai Temple (oldest temple in Cheung Chau) & streets

Beach views, lifeguard

Snack attack- taro "swirl" & red bean biscuit

Horseshoe crabs (alive!), sunset view, dinner gang

Baby blue nails with daisies

I feel blue today...oops..actually it's my fingers and toes...

I've yet to try out this new colour, I thought this colour looks so peaceful and sweet when I bought it.

I decided to be a little more adventurous today, erm...I mean with my painting tool..with different combination of colours. Daisies seem like an easy choice. Plus it looks kinda cute with the baby blue base.

Previous try at nail painting : apple green with white dots

Potluck & nails (pic 11-23)