Tuesday, December 30

Goodbye Jeannie

Ever since I started exercising regularly and eating more healthily (ie, change of lifestyle and eating habits!) for the past 5months, I have lost close to 5kg.

My extremely old pair of Giodarno jeans could barely fit anymore. It kept dropping off my wasit especially when I was running. And I always had to run after Jaimie. In fact, most my of pants do not fit anymore, and I am not complaining. heeheehee!!

I need to get a pair of jeans that fit because I do not want my pants to drop off during the jumping at MayDay concert this Sunday. I decided on good old Levis and now I finally have a pair of jeans that wont threaten to drop to my hips!

Goodbye, my favourite and comfy Giodarno jeannie. You have served me well and I hate to say goodbye. I am glad you are worth $50 for the Levis's "trade in your old jeans" discount.

This is my last photo of jeannie which I wore for at least 7 years taken at the Levis changing room.

Sunday, December 28

Queueing for MayDay Concert Tickets

December is all about queueing for me. We queued for the Xmas shows, we queued for the booking of bbq pit... and today, we queued for MayDay Concert tickets!

We reached Central at about 9.30am the queue was already this long. The official time to exchange the coupon was 2pm TODAY but we heard that the first in the queue (whom we thought was insane) started queueing at 2pm YESTERDAY. Luckily our fellow MayDay concert fan-friends, Idy and Irwin, reserved a place for us. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!
We looked around and found out that besides a uncle who was half balding with greying hair, we might just be the oldest fans queueing for the tickets today. And we were definitely the only fans who even brought our daughter to queue with us! My stamping kits and drawing pencils couldn't occupy little missy for very long. She started to dance around the little space she had and bumped into everyone around us. Clement and I had to take turns to bring her out of the queue so that we wouldn't get complains and perhaps got thrown out of the queue by the security guards.


I bought Jaimie to look for YiHui, my colleage. She came a little later than me and she had to stand in the sun!! She was an ardent fan of MayDay. She just came back from their same concert in Taipei 2 weeks ago. I wonder how many copies of the CDs she had bought because 1 CD only comes with 1 exchange coupon for the concert. And she had so kindly bought me something from Taipei.

This was the queue outside the mall, where Yihui was.
I walked down further and met this good samaritian ex-student of mine. He wasn't a MayDay fan. He was conned by his friend to queue to exchange for the tickets while the friend was having a holiday in Taiwan. He thought he could just come at 2pm until I told him otherwise. Poor Calvin. Luckily he got his tickets too. No.. his friend's tickets. =_=

And this was the crowd outside the mall. And the queue went on and on and on and on and on and on..... there were only 5000 tickets to give away.

When I came back, Clement took over Jaimie. He brought her to see the boats since we were at Boat Quay. According to Clement, Jaimie dashed into a shop with balloon decorations and asked for an orange balloon herself. =_= Shame girl!

Irwin got bored and he walked around the mall. So Idy and I spent the entire morning catching up and taking photos.

To get the tickets, we need to have the queue label (which we pasted on our arm), the original CD and of course the coupons that came with the CDs.


The organisers decided to start issuing the tickets an hour earlier than the intended time. This was good news to us because little missy woke up really early this morning although she had very distrubed sleep last night due to a sickening mosquito which bit all over her forehead. In fact, we had brought her stroller out in case she needed to sleep before we got our precious tickets.
Ahhhh... Idy and Irwin, see you next Sunday!!!

Saturday, December 27

Christmas Gathering Part Two

We are having another round of gathering this evening! Wooo hooooo~~~!! And today it is Terry and Pam's 8th wedding anniversary! In our previous gathering, we planned to bring wine, flowers and a cake to celebrate with them.

That's Terry and Pam. Pam is preggy with number 3. Another national hero. *salute*

The Swensen ice-cream cake YS bought. Thankfully it was a ice cream cake. It survived an E brake.

The happy family.

The girls. Dawn had not arrived when we took the picture because she went to watch Ip Man with Bernard.

The boys. Bernard had not arrived when we took the picture because he went to watch Ip Man with Dawn. =_=


Finally, the loving couple came in pink and pink.

The children enjoyed themselves too!


Happy Anniversary, my dear friend!
Cedric called from France and we all took turns to speak to him. Counting down to his arrival on the 19th of January!!!

3rd Class Behaviour

PART ONE

This was the queue when I went down to book the BBQ pit at 8am. The second and the third chair were occupied by grandma and granddaughter. The customer service opens at 9am. Well...

More people came after me but as there was no more space to stand behind me, they just hung around. I noticed an auntie in pink adidas tshirt came after me and I just made a mental note (out of boredom) that she was 4th in the queue.

Later, the Mr of the pink auntie took over her and he asked her what was her "queue number". She replied "3rd". I overheard it and I got a little defensive because I WAS THIRD.

When the counter was opened, the crude mannered uncle threw an open question to us "Who's first?" I quickly responded by pointing at the respective people in the queue"One, two and three".

"NO!!~~??" said the angry and upset uncle who had lost one eyesight, literally. "My wife said she was third."

"She came here first." the granddaughter in yellow shirt and pink collar pointed at me and replied as a matter of factly. Immediately, I gave him a "SEE?" look.

"WHY? WHY YOU LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT?" the one-eyed dragon suddenly barked at the girl. I was a little surprised because I thought he would bark at me instead. I turned to look at the girl and saw that she was looking at the uncle in a "sian" look. Well, the same look was on her face for the past one hour. She was just born with the sian face, not that she was trying to be funny or what.

"No...." she whispered and turned her head away.

Not believing my eye witness, Uncle picked up his handphone and called his wife to confirm their "queue number".

Sianz.

Third class behaviour.

PART TWO

My mobile phone rang. The caller id showed an unfamilar number but I still picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Hello..." click. The male voice, who sounded like a 20 something, probably realised that he dialed the wrong number and he just hung up without even saying sorry or goodbye.

Do I take this kind of behaviour?

Noooooo.

I called him back.

"HELLO. THE LEAST YOU CAN DO IS TO SAY SORRY YOU CALLED THE WRONG NUMBER OR SAY SORRY. DONT JUST HANG UP LIKE THAT."

Click.

Apparently this chap didn't learn his lesson.

Third class behaviour.

Thursday, December 25

Christmas Gathering Part One

When Clement went to UK in 2002 for his further studies, we became very close friends with the fellow Singaporean students doing similar courses in the same University. The bond we shared is very strong and we have always considered them part of our family.

YS invited us to his house for a steamboat dinner this evening. I was busy feeding Jaimie her dinner and thus forgot to take pics of the generous spread YS had prepared.

After some wine and a good dinner, the guys sat down to play PS3. They are SERIOUS gamers. Just look at their face. However, I had to make the pictures small because the original shots were blury. =_=


Jaimie was enjoying herself in Uncle YS's place. Sera jie-jie taught Jaimie how to "cook dinner" with her toys. The girls went wild in each other's company.

This is a "small scale" gathering which involves 3 families. There will be another "medium scale" gathering this Saturday.
We are all very excited about Xmas, New Year and Chinese New Year because our friend from France, whom we all got to know in UK as well, is coming to visit us again in January! We'll be taking turns to host him and his girlfriend, and bring them out for fun and sight-seeing for 3 weeks!!

More exciting gatherings to come!!!! And we are definitely looking forward to them!!!

Tuesday, December 23

Ip's The Man!

He's strong. He's courageous. His moves are lightning fast. He fights for honour and justice.

No, he isn't Superman. Nope, not Batman nor Ultraman nor Spiderman nor Iron Man either.

He's Ip Man. (Do I hear groans of protest?)

Ok ok....I admit that was lame. But the movie certainly wasn't. After viewing, I couldn't help but feel that the storyline and tone of the movie was reminscent of the 2006 film "Fearless", which starred Jet Li. Both films told the stories of kungfu masters who fought foreign adversaries, stood up for the honour and sovereignty of their race and country, and ultimately through their actions, aroused and galvanised the fighting spirits among their fellow countrymen. In terms of movie direction and choreography of fight scenes, I prefer the superfast, hard hitting style of Donnie Yen in this film to the more stylised, slow-mo sequences by Jet Li in the "Fearless" flick.

For a more proper review of the movie "Ip Man" by the co-author of this blog, please click here.

***********************************************

After the movie, Angie and I wondered around the newly opened sections of Jurong Point, which is now double its previous size before the revamp. Harris was having some sort of opening sales. I instantly gravitated towards the graphic novel (ok...comics) section that had big read posters which read "30% off all graphic novels".

I bought this hardcover edition of "The Ultimates" compilation. Normally, I would expect this to cost in excess of S$60, but today I only had to pay ~S$30. I am happy with this purchase. :)

Warming Up

The school vacation is ending soon and it's time for me to warm up my engine for Bento Making!

Time to whip out my bento boxes and bento making tools and wake up at 5am again!

Pizza Toast. An idea shared by Vivian. Tastes yummy!!

Baked terriyaki salmon with cocktail sausages, broccoli, kamaboko and instant noodles for a lazy dinner.

Monday, December 22

ADVERTISMENT

A & C DOMESTIC HELPER / DAUGHTER-IN-LAW TRAINING AGENCY
We specialise in training toddlers to become good domestic helpers, wives and daughters in law.
Hands on training for the children.

Personal training by experienced daddy.No fees charged. ABSOLUTELY FREE!

Training venue: Jurong area.

To register your child, please drop a line in the comments form.

Limited to 10 children. HURRY TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT!

Sunday, December 21

Some details of our trip

Since Clement wrote about our trip to KL and Sunway Lagoon, I shall just add on some details of our trip.

Lunch at Bejaya Times Sq
After playing in the Cosmo World in BTS (which opens only at 11am) for about an hour, we decided to go for lunch so that Jaimie could go for a nap back in the hotel before we returned to the amusement park, which allows multiple re-entry.

We decided to go for something simple since we had a heavy buffet breakfast in the hotel. The breakfast spread was average, typical Malaysian hotel food. There was nothing fantastic but we were easy going people (read: glutton) so we just ate and ate, lah.

Anyway, we settled on a place called "Station Kopitiam", which promised us more than 100 dishes to choose from. It wasn't very crowded. I estimated about 10 tables were being occupied. I picked a meatball spaghetti but the staff returned to tell me in Malay that it was not available today. Hmmm.... nevermind. As a very easy-going person, I easily picked another dish from the menu. Thankfully it was available.

While waiting, Clement brought Jaimie around the mall and the little girl came back 10mins later with a balloon. Our food and drinks were still not served.

We waited, and waited, and waited. Until.... Station kopitiam hired a lot of waiters and they looked very busy walking all over the place but no work was done. And the speed of their walking reminds me of the zombies in the game Clement played on his PS3/ Wii (which ever...)-- Resident Evil. Slow motioned, expressionless, not interested, waiting to be fired. I would not hesitate to pick up a shotgun and shoot at these real life zombies.

I managed to get the attention of one of the zombies and with my terribly limited Malay I told her to "Boleh tell kitchen chepat sikit?? Saya anak tidok already." She nodded disinterestedly and walked off. BANG BANG!

While waiting, Clement said, "If it's Meekfreek, I think she would not hesitate to complain to the manager!" I begged to differ. I said, "She'll probably just walk away." And we mangaed to kill some time guessing MF's reaction to the situation. Meekfreek?

We waited for a total of 40mins for this sweet and sour fish rice to be served. It has a total of 3.5slices of fish and we wondered how come it took 40mins to prepare!

SERVICE

We had Sushi King 2 days in a row. Once in BTS and once in Sunway Pyramid Mall. I think the food there in Sushi King is cheap and good!


This sashimi cost 25RM and a very decent set meal cost less than 20RM.

Anyway, I was generally more impressed with the service I received in Sunway. It wasn't just a shop or a hotel staff. Good service is everywhere. We didn't have any complains about the service in BTS except the zombies I mentioned earlier. The hotel staff was very nice and helpful too but they have a gap to bridge when compared to the hotel staff in Sunway Pyramid! When we checked out in from Pyramid Hotel, a chamber"man" (he was an Indian guy... so cant call him "chambermaid") greeted us and very nicely and politely, asked if we were checking out. When we said we were, he said "Thank you, sir. Goodbye, sir. Hope to see you again." It makes me feel very good and I sure hope to see him again! I should have asked him for his name and write a recommendation note but he was just one of the staff who makes me feel very welcomed and warm in the hotel.

Oh.. back to Sushi King. The staff in the BTS outlet were less zombie than those in the Station Kopitiam. They were ok.. just doing their job. The staff in Pyramid actually came up to us and asked us for feedback and they were very prompt. We definitely feel good and we to the extend we tipped them (which we, cheapo, do not usually do).

SHOPPING

Need I tell you again that I am a shopaholic?

Even though my fellow shopaholic friend Meekfreek shared in her blog that she bought nothing from BTS, I changed quite a bit of RM in case it was just Meekfreek's opinion. I finished walking round the mall in 1.5hours (it was hugh, must give credit to the space). Of which, I spent 20mins finding my way back to the hotel because some lifts serve odd numbered floors and some even numbered and some brought me to their offices. I spent another 20mins of the 1.5hours queuing in MarryBrowns (don't ask me why but it is a MUST EAT for us when we go Malaysia) because, as usual, the pace of the service is half a beat slower.

Anyway anway, sorry I digressed again.

There were so many shops in BTS but in my opinion, I think all the boutiques got their supplies from This Fashion. I was utterly disappointed. I couldn't even spend a single sen although I very much wanted to!

On the other hand, Sunway Pyramid is a shopping paradise!!! The shops are so much more happening. There is a good mix of local and international brands. I regret only spending one day in Sunway Lagoon!! And I shopped till I need to use my credit card.

BREAKFAST

What is spoilt for choice? The buffet breakfast in Pyramid Hotel IS spoilt for choice. It not only serves all the food that the BTS Hotel serves (no complains.. normal spread lah), it has much more! I like the french toast, the choice of cereals, the omelette station, the mini-steak, the siew mai...

Hmmm.. wait a minute. Maybe there was a complain on the BTS breakfast. Clement took a bowl of the porridge from the porridge station and complained to me that the staff either mixed up the pots or labelled the pots wrongly because he scooped from the pot with the "chicken porridge" label but it tasted like plain porridge. I ate some and told him it's plain chicken porridge. I could taste the chicken. Maybe it was Clement's taste buds.

Fly Me To The Sun (Way Lagoon)

We just returned from our 4D/3N KL-Sunway Lagoon holiday last night. This was the third time Jaimie has gotten her passport stamped on; the first two times had been trips to Genting Highlands. This time, however, was this little girl's maiden ride on an aeroplane. Not those kiddy aeroplane rides that Jae had till now associated "taking a plane" with, mind you, but the real deal (Note: Since her Genting Theme Park experience, whenever being asked "Have you ever been on an aeroplane?", Jae would always respond with a resounding "Yes!").

Like the previous two holidays in Malaysia with Jae, this one had been both fun and tiring. Those ocassions when you wanted to do something or get to somewhere but an overwhelmingly disruptive force was at work to foil your every attempt to do so were especially trying. You wanna go east, she'd be breaking loose and making a dash towards the west. You wanna stay put for a peaceful meal (Wow. I just realised as I was typing that this is one thing we havn't experienced in a long time as a family), she'd be performing a Houdini from the high chair. It's like wadding through quicksand. Nevertheless, it wasn't as if these were anything we hadn't come across prior to the trip, nor not know how to handle. It was a good thing that this was one of those free-and-easy holiday, and the fact that we had absolute control over our programme made it very manageable and therefore more enjoyable.

Armed with my trusty Canon 400D and the up till now grossly under-utilised Olympus mju-790SW, the total number of pictures taken with these two shooters throughout this trip was a respectable 326. Took me a long while to sort through them - deleting really blurry, CMI and duplicate ones.

Here're some highlights of the trip~
.................................................................................................

After checking in just one piece of our luggage and having received our boarding passes, we had dinner at Popeye's, cleared the immigration counter and very casually proceeded to the designated gatehold area. Along the way, we stopped to take souvenir pictures with the characters from Disneyland, currently putting up as guests at the Changi Airport. Unlike those displays at the publicly accessible areas, these hardly had any crowd and there wasn't a need to hustle in queue for an hour just to depress that shutter button in front of that talking rodent.



These are the ticket stubs of Jae's maiden flight. I've saved them so they can join the other items in Jae's Time Capsule. We flew by JAL. The flight from Singapore to KLIA was really quite empty, as you'd be able to tell from one of the pic in the collage below. Ok, that the pic showed not a single soul is a little exagerated, since we got priority when boarding (travelling with kids has its priviledges~) and the shot was taken shortly after we'd boarded, but the fact was the plane took off with really few passengers on it.

Before take-off, a Japanese air stewardess brought a tray-full of goodies to Jae, and offered the little one to take her pick. I ended up grabbing the plush toy plane (the detachable engines are binoculars and they actually work!) on her behalf and got to pry the deck of playing cards from her fingers. The journey by plane was a short one, lasting only about 40 minutes. Jae was quite excited especially during the taking off and landing sequences, when I would give her a running commentary of what was going on and what she would be expecting to come. Mommy had prepared ample supply of haw flakes snack, which she generously offered to Jae just prior to and during taking off. The little one didn't have any complaints due to discomforts from pressure changes, so that was good.

It wasn't surprising that she told us later that she'd enjoyed the rides on the aeroplanes.


Our first destination was the Berjaya Times Square in KL. The tour agent had arranged for a limosine to pick us up from the KLIA. When we reached the hotel, it was already past Jae's regular bedtime, so it was hitting the showers and then onto the bed. As you'd be able to tell from the pics below, the girls liked the bed in the deluxe suite that we'd paid an extra S$30 per night to upgrade from the regular rooms. Oh, the other thing that Jae enjoyed was the bathtub. My only complain was that the water took forever to heat up during one of Jae's bathtubbing sessions.


Berjaya Times Square. The shopping complex is located just adjacent to the hotel tower. There was a convenient linkway at the 14th storey, so we could traverse from our hotel room to the retail sections (relatively) quickly. The shopping complex was HUGE, but according to Angie (after an hour of window shopping during Jae's afternoon nap on the second day), it was like a gigantic This Fashion outlet. She returned empty-handed, and sorely dissapointed.


The highlights of our 2-night stay at the BTS was of course the playtime at COSMO'S WORLD. A signage there proudly proclaimed it to be "the largest indoor theme park in Malaysia" (which isn't saying much, actually). Thanks to meekfreek, who gave us vouchers from her previous visit to that place, we didn't have to play for the entrance tickets. We realised we only needed two vouchers, since the staff informed us that Jae could enter for free. We quickly found out that that wasn't a good thing at all. This place had a very stringent safety regime that prohibited visitors below (or above for certain rides) the stipulated high limits from taking the rides. This meant that Jae could only get on 4 of the rides, which she ended up taking over and over again.


The rides that Jae was allowed on were those that permitted kids below 3ft (91cm) to get on with an accompanying adult. They were (clockwise from top left): (1) Crazy Bus, (2) Botanic Drive, (3) Fantasy Trail and (4) Buddy Go Round. In case you are wondering how was it that Jae was unaccompanied in (3), well that was quickly taken after the ride had stopped and mommy had hopped off the carriage.


Consistent with her preferences exhibited during her previous trips to the Genting Theme Parks, the ride that Jae enjoyed the most was the merry-g0-round (called Buddy Go Round here). She went on this many many times, and tried all the different mounts they had e.g. the catepillar one, the revolving cup one, the space shuttle one and the velociraptor one (I'm guessing here, since the creature looked like a cross between a chicken and a dinosaur).
Add Image

Thankfully, besides the kiddy rides, there was also a playground area that Jae could have fun in. Oh, there was also a Kids Theatre that screened children movies. When we got in, they were playing "Finding Nemo". Jae didn't seem to be very interested. After around five minutes, she clammered to leave, so we proceeded out for dinner at Sushi King. Maybe she was hungry.


Ok ok....fast forward to Day 3, and to Sunway Lagoon. Even though we didn't upgrade the room for the Pyramid Tower Hotel, we prefered this over the BTS one. The overall ambience was better, and it didn't have that irritating card-activated lift (that failed to work during one of our trips in it), nor an emerald-coloured vanity top in the toilet (which Angie disliked enough to voice it out to me). These pics below were taken from our hotel room window.


We'd found out beforehand that there were many theme parks there, including an amusement park, a wildlife park, something called "Extreme Park" and of course the water park. Since we had only one day at the Sunway Lagoon, we could only settle for one of these, so it was decided that our afternoon shall be spent frolicking in the water park. The entrance was per entry and children below 90cm enter for free (the staff actually made Jae stand at the height chart to ascertain her height).

Ah, this is where my Olympus mju-790SW shock and water proof digicam came in handy. Since I'd known we were going for this trip, I'd gotten this second-hand camera off ebay, but had until now little opportunity to put it to the test. As you can see, it worked really well both above and under water. Before this trip, I'd also come across posts in online forums where netizens griped about how lousy Sunway Lagoon was, about how poor the maintenance there was and how dirty and murky the water in the pool was blah blah blah. Well, I was glad that the water wasn't so murky as to ruin my underwater shots, afterall.

Pictures of Jae having fun by herself...


With mommy...


With daddy...


We spent close to four hours in the water park, after which we headed back for a quick shower and then out again to the adjoining Sunway Pyramid shopping mall. If I'm not mistaken, this was even larger than the one at BTS. The place was ENORMOUS! One could quite easily get disoriented in the many interconnected branches and sections of this place, which I think would very accurately be categorised as a shopping complex. It even had an ice skating arcade on its basement level.

It was while traversing the very large footprint of this place that my sandals decided that they had had enough. Angie convinced me to buy a pair of Reebok sandals (pictured in top RH corner) as a replacement before they fell apart completely.

That smiling lady pictured below is Ella Koon. She was doing some promotion for the Follow Me line of products at one of the atriums (yes, they have multiple atriums there). We didn't know who she was until I googled her up and found out that she's some HK actress-singer.

We had Sushi King for dinner two days in a row.


Even in the shopping mall, there were plenty of activities to kept the little one occupied. The animal rides were cheap at 3RM, and lasted quite a long while (unlike those in Singapore). The mini ferris wheel ride was FOC. Angie had only got to flash her Master card, that's all.


Finally it was time to leave Sunway Lagoon. Jae stared wistfully out of the window, wondering when we'd be coming back here again.

The Sunway Lagoon leg of the trip had definitely been more fun than the one over at BTS. If we were to come to KL again, we'd just skip BTS and come straight here.


After a fully-packed four day trip, it is now time to rest, rest and rest. (Clockwise from top left: on bed in BTS hotel room, inside limosine enroute to airport, on bench in arrival hall of KLIA, at dining table in Sushi King of Sunway Pyramid)

Sweet dreams my dear....