Karaoke @ Neway Cheras

We pre-celebrated my brother's birthday this year. It was his 21st birthday, so we did something stupid different. We decided to go for a karaoke session to celebrate the occassion at Neway karaoke in Cheras.

So we sang for 3 hours straight, from the evergreen songs to the current pop songs. I'm amazed none of us got sore throat after that.

It just sinked in to me that my little brother has turned 21 !!! And the days when I used to help mom babysit him were just like yesterday. Gosh, I'm old :P

Another winner from bro

I skipped reading the newspaper one day, and then it had to happened on that day that I missed out my brother's winning picture in the Star's thumbnails submission. I was pleasantly surprised when sis shared with me the news during last week's trip back home. I'm pretty sure I would have known it was my brother had I spotted the picture in the newspapers.

N said the picture caught his attention but he didn't bothered to notice the picture contributor's name. *cheh!*

Once back home, I quickly pull out the thumbnails page from the newspapers as keepsake, filed together with my own winning entry.

We now have two winners in the family *smug grin*

- Photo courtesy of thestar.com.my (linked) -

First Wedding Anniversary

N & I actually celebrated our first wedding anniversary a day late. Yeah..he actually forgot it on the day itself! Of course I was a bit pissed at that, but my usual self just would not allow me to blow the top. He messaged me the next day confessing his blunder, and promised to bring me out for a nice dinner. I thought probably it's also a blessing as we would not have enjoyed celebrating it on a Thursday night compared to a Friday night.

We had German dinner fare at the Stadt restaurant in Bandar Puteri Puchong. We tried the popular pork knuckles, pork chop, the imported German beer (forgot the name), the green pea soup (which I didn't like), the seafood soup (yummy, I like the tomato base) and a mocktail (also forgot the name :p). The food portions were huge! The pork knuckles were grilled to perfection, as the crispy skin smelled so yummy, just like the siu yok, but much better. I definitely agree with all those food bloggers out there that you just have to get more than 2 persons to sample the food there. The price is reasonable, cheaper than some other German restaurants in KL.

And as a anniversary gift, I get to pick a watch for myself! So this is what I picked - a Solvil Titus white leather bracelet watch, with date display and luminous hands, which I have always wanted in my lady watch.

I won a hamper!

There was a local event in celebration of the Chinese New Year today. As usual, I try my best to participate, mostly as audience and grab the door gifts :P

The big prize of the day was a big hamper waiting to be won. All that was needed to win was to name the 12 chinese zodiac animals in sequence. The first time the question was asked, I had not raise my hand. I hesitated. But when the question was posed the second time, I thought what the heck, and my arm just shot up! And my heart was pumping hard, I was nervous and thinking "sh*t, what if I can't remember all of them in the right sequence...".

I guess the lucky star was shining on me that day. I was selected to answer the question. I managed to got all right and won the hamper! Yay!!! 

Oh, about the hamper...it was a usual hamper stacked up with lots of junk food, a sparkling juice, some bird nests soup, and some canned food. So I didn't bother to take a photo of it. It wasn't the hamper that gave me the happiness, it was the "lucky factor" and the fact that I won the big prize that made my day! 

I say that's a good start to the roaring Tiger year ! :)

Goodbye 2009 ....

I realised I've slacked on my blogging...a lot. Have not been posting anything since the last 2 months. But it's ok, I've done many things outside of blogging world :P

Since this is the last day of 2009, I shall look back over the year that had passed...

Jan - Feb: still busy into wedding preparations and invitations RSVPs, busy on my new house renovations. and alot of cleaning, tidying and decoration work and moving things to the new house.

Mar: Had my "GuoDaLi" (bethrothal ceremony), getting married and moving into the new house. And went to Maldives for the honeymoon trip. Work-wise, getting a new line manager and lots of changes in work portfolio, roles & responsibilities and team mates.

Apr: Settling down to married life and changes in work. Adapting to married routine (lots of cooking & cleaning around the house). Frequent visits to in-laws' and my parents' house. Thinking of getting a pet dog, visited SPCA thinking to get a puppy but couldn't get any. Finally bought a cute male chihuahua.

May: welcomed our very first pet dog, Kiko, into our home on the 1st. Toilet-training for the puppy and lots of play time with Kiko. Had our first house-warming party.

June: down with flu. went to Dog's Day event in KL. started some gardening work at home. bought a new blender. experimenting with new recipes in the kitchen.

July: first time brought Kiko to the public park. Taught him some new tricks. First flash flood at the main access road to our housing garden, which stopped us from getting home. Got a new team mate at work.

Aug: first time trying Batik painting in a company event. went for ATV ride with some colleagues. more gardening work at home. Tried making my very first "loh mai kai" (chicken glutinous rice).

Sept: bought new microwave oven, started exploring oven cooking. bought and installed water filter (cleaner washing & drinking water finally!). brought Kiko to neighbourhood morning market. Submitted a winnning photo to the Star's newspaper thumbnails section. 5D4N visit to SiemReap and Phonm Penh with some friends. Totally a cultural visit!

Oct: a.ka. Ikea-month.. why? because we practically visited Ikea every weekend in October! project of the month was decorating the guest room. We got almost everything from Ikea. Though we had a busy and tiring time designing, planning, shopping, transporting and fixing up the room, we were really happy with the results! *you are quite welcome to stay overnight at our guest room :) Finally got my RM50 cheque for the winning photo I submitted. Joined company annual dinner event, and finally got my very first caricature drawing there! Also won a small gift from the lucky draw event :) First time participating in a Dikir Barat performance for a company's event, learnt about the dikir and made new friends.

Nov: work winding down for the year end. Busy planning for year end trip and some more minor renovations for the house. reflections on work and some planning for next year. Planning for all-gals gathering. Invited to perform a 2nd dikir barat performance at company's annual dinner (what a proud achievement for the dikir team!).

Dec: slow month as usual. Had our very first all-gals gathering (totally smashing! Had a great time catching up with everyone). 5d4n trip to Phuket, went for our very first Thai kick-boxing competition show and even got ourselves the VIP seats (just 2nd row from the ring!). "2nd-phase" renovation started for the house.

I've missed out alot of stuffs but generally this had been a great year. Lots of new experiences and learnings. And married life is not that bad as it sounds! It's less than 2 hours away from 2010, and I'm looking forward to the new year with lots of hope for a greater year ahead :D

The RM50 cheque is here!!!

The smell of money can't be wrong... I was eyeing the mail delivery man making his rounds in the office, and then he stopped at my cubicle. There's a mail for me, one that I was looking forward to.

Yes, the RM50 cheque from the Star has arrived. Finally I got my cash prize for the candid photo I submitted weeks ago. And here's how the cheque looks like, proving to you it's not fake ok? (of course the personal details have been blocked out) :P

"Kiasu"-ism & me at Ikea

It was a beautiful Saturday, and like any kiasu people out there, I wanted to be the first 100 early birds to register for a free gift at Ikea, and oh my, I got it. Yeah sweet! A limited edition yellow-colour book ends (those that you "kepit" at the end of your books to prevent it from tilting forward). And the day was also the 5th anniversary of N & I being together as a couple (not as married couple, mind you…). So you see, it never occurred to me that I would see my ex on this fine day.

The limited edition book ends

N & I were busy looking around the marketplace hall in Ikea, at the fabrics section. I wanted to skip the section, but N was still lingering around looking for some panel curtains. It was then I looked up to my left while trying to search for N and instead, horror of all horrors, I was looking straight at my ex! Not that I had anything to hide, but I wanted to avoid having to make any casual small talk with him (imagine how fake it would be!) It was lucky that he wasn’t looking at me at the moment.

Somehow, we miraculously avoided each other paths. Perhaps he already spotted me (since I was wearing bright red!) and made a conscious effort to avoid me at all costs. Whatever he was thinking, I was glad we did not bump into each other. I quickly called out to N to hurry off to the next section. And I told him in hush tones what I saw. Trust me, it is an awkward feeling when you see your ex appearing near you when you least expected it.

But I quickly forgot the whole episode, as N & I were busy picking up more furniture for the house and spent our last weekend putting up the new cabinets and installing the shelves, attended two Hari Raya open-house invitations and ended the Sunday night watching the movie “Orphan”.

The RM50 winning photo that I took

I took this candid photo of dad feeding the monkeys at Bukit Malawati at Kuala Selangor, but the monkey got the better of him, clutching him from the back trying to get the whole pack of food for himself.

And this candid photo won me RM50! yeah..you read it right. I submitted the photo to The Star daily thumbnails with a funny title and caption: Piggyback monkey - Hey mister, I actually prefer a piggyback ride than bananas!

I thought I had a pretty good chance at the RM50 prize. And I was right ;-) Check it out at The Star's website. However, the editor had changed my photo's title and caption.

Painting a fish on batik

I've volunteered for the Batik painting event in the Company's Diversity event today. I was so eager to volunteer because I was so jakun have never done it before.

Eventhough my team mate ditched me last minute and fortunately managed to find a replacement team mate, it did not dampen my spirits. Yup, memanglah semangat and spirited :P

I must say my new team mate done quite well in the colouring *smug grin*. We were given a picture of a fish. The outline of the picture has been done. What we needed to do was to put in the colours only.

We were given Chinese calligraphy "paintbrush", a plastic container for water, palettes, a few bottles of different ink colours, and a small piece of cloth to soak up the water. I gave some ideas how we should paint the picture, and then we started the painting process. We're supposed to finish it within 30 minutes.

So my team mate "tackled" the main subject - the fish, and I did the rest i.e. the coral reefs, rocks, the blue water and the spots on the fish. We tried our best to bring some colour gradients, mixing colours and hopefully the end result look good enough. The painting was quite easy, as the batik cloth absorbs water real fast. The trick is to play around with water to get a lighter/darker tone of colour. As a finishing touch, we put our department's name and our initials to the batik painting

Tadaaa.... nah..tengoklah sendiri the hasil kerja. Not bad lah kan.. for two first-timers ? :P

Dancing bamboos, crazy shopping and a punctured tyre

My garden weeds are growing like nobody's business, and besides the little purple and white flower plants I bought last month, my garden looks kinda bare. My bum was itching to visit the plant nursery, so I bugged N to bring me there.

I like those bamboo trees that sway in the wind, it has so "zen-feel" in it, and looks like it's the in-thing nowadays. So we got two matured bamboo trees, which cost me RM110 each. I guess it was worth it, since the trees were already taller than my head, and had 5 to 6 trunks with leafy branches. Then I also got some other smaller flower plants. The plus point was the nursery worker was going to deliver the plants we bought and "cangkul" the hard soil and plant the bamboo trees for me!

After spending RM250 in that nursery, it was finally raining after a long stretch of dry humid days. It was pouring hard, and our tummy very growling loud. We head to Jusco for lunch and shopping. Shopped we did, membeli dan membelah our wallets. I got another two pair of shoes, when I just got the first 2 pairs last week! Gosh! But it was on sale, and I thought the shoes were lovely and so comfy!!

Anyway, after belah-ing our wallets, and ready to go home...N discovered one of the rear tyres was punctured. Right in the parking lot! Sheesh... So we're not going home yet?? Lucky the rain has stopped by then. N got into action replacing the punctured tyre with the spare. Second lucky for us, the tyre shop was just across the road, and it was still opened! Another RM5 spent to fix the punctured tyre and RM 1.80 on a bottle of soya milk later, we were finally home...

* N in action changing tyre (he told me to take these photos ok ? don't think I'm so "sam-pat" to take photos when people are busy changing tyres!)

Everyone got something, including Kiko who was just napping at home. N got Kiko a soft blue pillow, and radio-controlled car. It was love at first sight. I meant the pillow. Kiko just loves scratching the "holes" in the pillow. Somehow, he knew it was meant for him. The car? hmm.. I wouldn't say "love". He was curious yet afraid of it, he tried chasing the car, and barked when the car came at him. Well, that's his new toy for now. Or is it N's new toy? Haii..I don't know..whatever... boys will be boys :P

Fascination of blender and banana honey milkshake

I've bought a bunch of pisang emas a few days ago. When I bought them, they were still greenish yellow in colour. But they turned yellow in just a day. Anyway, that's not my point. My point is yesterday night, I enjoyed my first homemade banana honey milkshake. Not that I never drank banana milkshake before, but having it prepared by N is not an everyday's luxury ok? :P

I finally bought a Philips blender two weekends ago. N's quite fascinated with the idea of blending fruit juices and milkshakes and ice blended drinks and smoothies and....well, you get the idea. Meanwhile, I'm pretty impressed with the chopper function. It shaves off lots of time chopping up the garlics and carrots and any other food you can think off. NOW I know how useful and convenient the chopper can be.

In case you're wondering, I'm not trying endorse any Philips products here, or trying to show off my new blender. I'm just sharing the fascination and joy of buying my first own blender and making yummy drinks out of it. Hmm..chillies, garlics and gingers will be next. Not for drinks laa..for my curry dishes laa... ;-)

Oh, I almost forgot, if you're looking for banana honey milkshake recipe...

Ingredients:

3 or 4 bananas (depending on size and how banana-ish taste you like)

2 tablespoons of honey

1 small box of milk

Steps:

1. Peel and cut bananas into smaller chunks (2-3 cm)

2. Put bananas into blender jug and pour in the milk.

3. Add honey.

4. Blend the mixture for few seconds until it's foamy and all bananas seems to be blended into bits.

5. Put some ice cubes and enjoy your drink.

Getting better :)

After more than a week of sniffling and coughing, my flu is finally on the upper end of recovery route :) I woke up yesterday morning feeling better already. My nose amazingly didn't "run", and my coughing was lesser.

I think I owe it to the "morning sleep-in till 10am" on the last weekend. Thanks to N who considerately didn't wake me up when he quietly woke up earlier to feed breakfast to Kiko, who waited patiently for me to wake up to have breakfast with me, all the while keeping himself busy surfing Internet and playing Xbox games in the living room (at least that's the sound I heard from underneath the sheets upstairs in my bed :P)

Perhaps I was exhausted for the past few weeks without enough rest, that I didn't realise my body immunity system was under performing.

Anyway, all I wanted to say was, I'm thankful and glad that I'm feeling better already. And thanks to N who was understanding to occassionally excuse me from dinner cooking duties and patient with my sometimes irrational behaviours when I'm feeling sickly :P

Down with flu

First it started with coughing because of the phlegm in the throat, then I started to sneeze and sniffle. The sniffling got worse and my coughs were continuous, like I was going to cough my lungs out! Finally went to see the doctor who gave me the flu tablets, cough mixture and lozenges to sooth my sorethroat.

Due to the recent A(H1N1) virus outbreak, the doctor took extra precautions when diagnosing my symptoms. He took my blood pressure, measured my body temperature and asked if I'd been travelling overseas.

As I'm writing this, I'm feeling much better already. But I'm staying & working from home today. No need to infect the rest of the office colleagues with my flu bug!

1st Housewarming Party @ May-2nd

We had our very first housewarming party earlier this month. It was almost an impromptu party, as we only decided to have a party a week after C&Y's wedding, so that the couple could join in the fun before they flew off.

It was most fortunate that most of our friends still managed to come on that day. N & I had just brought back Kiko the previous day, we were busy attending to Kiko and still had to clean up the house for the party. Both of us were excited with the new pup and also hosting our very first party at home!

We came back from groceries shopping just in time to greet the first batch of visitors. I had pondered many times over the menu for the night, should I cook, steamboat or get some fast food. I knew I couldn't cook for a big crowd, and I don't have a steamboat pot, the dining table can't fit a crowd for sit down dinner... so the best option is to have a finger food ala Pizza Hut's pizzas and roasted chickens from Ayamas, plus some fried nuggets and cocktail sausages, salads and fruits.

The gals popped in early to help me out with the preparations. Thanks to MC, MY and Y who helped me with the cocktail sticks and salad for the night! And also thanks to my dear friends for all the generous housewarming gifts.

We enjoyed ourselves very much watching the wedding photos and videos of C&Y and N&myself, flipping wedding albums, and catching up with each other.

I was glad the party went well. Here are some photos taken courtesy of MY.

Kiko, our new Chihuahua puppy

N & I have finally got ourselves a puppy! A long haired chihuahua (吉娃娃), that is. And a cute one too. This little cutie is only two weeks and a half old when these pictures were took at the pet shop in Ikano. We got it for RM1,799, with some discount vouchers thrown in by the shop. We could get anything from the shop on 15% discount for the first purchase.

We had scoured the Internet on puppies & dogs pictures, for adoption or for sale, and had even went to SPCA and the pet shop at MidValley to look around. However, none caught our eye. Though one brown mongrel in SPCA came close. The dog was already an adult, so it was not exactly what we wanted. However it was very friendly. But we wanted something smaller.

We went to Ikano last weekend, and somehow this little cutie caught our eyes. The pet shop assistant did a good job in explaining (or "selling" rather) to us how a chihuahua was going to be a good pet for both of us. In the end, we were both "conned" into buying this cutie to join our family! :P

Since it's a male dog, I decided to name it Kiko. Look at the 3 different colours patches on his body. It just make him looks so adorable. He was shivering a little when I carried him in my arms. When I wanted to return him to the pet shop assistant, little Kiko then tried to glue his head to my chest!

Kiko is coming back home this Friday. We're so looking forward to it! :D

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

Potluck & nails

What an odd title for this post. Yup, you read it right. We had Pot Luck at J's house this time. Since this year, this has been a ritual for my lunch gang. We would take turns hosting a pot luck gathering.

This time we had herbal chicken, fried rice, fried noodles, satay, fried pork strips, barley dessert, fruits and ice cream. No photos on the food as I was too hungry to think of snapping photos. It was only when eating dessert, did I realise that mistake.

Anyway, the highlight of the pot luck gathering was nails stamping! Thanks to A. She recently acquired a new hobby of nails stamping and has bought the necessary nails stamping set. So we were there to be her "guinea pigs" :P

It was fantastic how fast she could use those tools to transform our plain nails into nicely coloured nails with fancy patterns and little sticky glitters. I'm not going to describe in length, let the photos do the talking. Since there are many photos here, I'll post them up in few subsequent posts.

Visit here for nails stamping stuff.

Fancy nails

My initial plan was to get new eye shadow colours. But when I stepped into Elianto shop yesterday, my eyes spotted this "RM5 for one". Those colourful nail colours were hard to resist.



I had used its nail colours before, so I knew it was worthy buy. And again, I was thinking to myself, let's just get a top coat polish and one fancy colour. I ended up buying two more...but still no top coat polish.










So my collection is now...










Oh, the neon orange and one of the marroon bottle have dried out. So you can't count those in. So it ain't too many right..erm..how many? Well...what? It's only eight of them mah... A creative artist has to have her colour palette ok? :P And my "additional artist tools"...the toe separators (pink coloured) and a dried out correction fluid pen (aka "liquid paper").











Hehe...scratching your head why is the "liquid paper" a tool leh...
I experimented a few materials to find the right tool which I can use to draw simple patterns, and this turned out to be the best.

Since I'm just a novice, I started off with the easy patterns first... I chosed green and white colour combination to offset the greenish hue. Excuse the occassional "stray colours", I still need to practise to paint with my left hand and trying hard to control it not having some "parkinson's disease" while I paint.

My nails
My toes

My new hairstyle

I decided to had a haircut last weekend. Getting bored with my same old long hairstyle.
(If you wonder why I seldom change hairstyle...I don't like to visit the hair saloon :P)

I was contemplating which hairstyle will suit me..
short or medium?
wavy or straight?

I wanted a make over. So I decided to visit a "trustable" saloon, one which I visited once long ago, and was pretty pleased with the results. For the benefit of those who haven't seen my latest look, deng deng deng... (don't laugh ok :P)

The hairstyle is shoulder's length and I had it coloured dark brown ;-) I like the fringe and the hair "fly-aways" at the side.

Haircut from Snips Saloon (Leisure Mall), hairstylist - Sunny

What I've been up to...

I just got tagged by Amidrin again. But sorry Ami, I won't be doing this tag because I just can't recall any most embarassing moments.

Brief reflection on the past 3 weeks.

• dearie has went started his job relocation to HK (yahoo! I'm free! :P but it's no fun on the weekends without him)
• CNY has came and will end today (eat, sleep)
• Valentine's day has came and went (no celebrations this year)
• work piling up for the year but good news I'm getting a good bonus this year! (yay~)
• got a DBKL summons for parking at the restricted place (duh~)
• am now busy discussing this year's workplan (yes, more work)
• elections fever is on! (yes! this is the 1st time I'm voting, I missed the previous) So I'm also busy reading up politics in the news section, deciding who to give my vote to.
  

Hopefully I'll find more time (and mood) to write more posts here.