This year, instead of spending Christmas over at my parents’ place. We decided to do it at Keong’s apartment instead. Although I still did go over to my parents’ place on the eve to go church together. Mom originally wanted to order turkey and do the traditional Christmas meal thingy but Dad didn’t really like turkey meat so we settled for steamboat instead; something that he doesn’t fancy as well. Haha.

Keong decorated his apartment with cute Christmas spruce (don’t think it was ‘boughs of holly’ though.. so no need to go fa-la-la-la-la)

The yong tofu, meatballs (my favourite and throughout the meal somehow all the meatballs which I chucked into the pot seemed to have disappeared! ) and Siew Pak Choi.

Quails eggs although it is high in cholesterol but steamboat is not complete without it, some seafood tofu, golden-needle mushrooms and yao mak.

The Full Christmas spread awaiting hungry folks

The Customary Family Picture : photographer not in though.

A Very Belated Merry Christmas to All!

A very back-dated post. Suddenly at the end of the year there were so many things to do. At work and also for the post graduate. My assignment was due the first few days of the new year and also work had deadlines that needed to complete just before the factory shutdown. But as usual, we celebrated the Winter Solstice this year on Dec 21st at home with my parents.

Siew Yoke, a must in almost all my family celebratory meals. Sinful but we all need to live a little eh?

Kailan, some greens to balance off the meats

Braised Mushrooms with Pork

The Pak-Cham Chicken. Being typical Chinese, we need to have ‘head’ and ‘tail’. Showed this a friend of mine(not Malaysian) whether she would eat this. Her reply was ” I cannot swallow anything that is staring at me! ” Damn Funny

Chives with tofu. Again, this is laced with meats. Not really a vegetable dish. Really need to cut back.

The star of the evening. The tong yuen with a difference. My dad decided the usual tong yuen is boring, therefore he added the sea coconut and longans. The colouring for the tong yuen is all-natural. The greens are made with Pandan leaves and the reds are made with dragon fruit.

Had a great celebration with my family. Hopefully I can still fit into my clothes when Chinese New Year comes!

… really affects us in more ways than we care to think about.

When I was buying my new camera, the first criteria I set before I even look at all the other specifications was the thing must run on either SD card or SDHC (thanks San for enlightening me on this!)

The last camera Alex and I owned was the Sony Cybershot. Being Sony, of course THE GURU in Proprietary hardware/software came out with their fantastic Memory Stick which is can be pretty frustrating when you find an Original memory stick that doesn’t work and the vendor must ‘downgrade’ it to the OEM ones!

At first I wanted to consider the Olympus Model where it can go understand and withstand the rough handling yet again the type of memory cards that it uses to run was XD card. Not a good choice.

Anyway, I am quite a NIKON fan. Nikon RAWKS!

Just want to wish a big congratulations to Kevin and his lovely wife, Suet San in welcoming their first born. Hey pal, you’re the first in our house to get a baby! Cannot believe that there is a lil’ Snow!

Finally. After a long knitting session, I finally had my first hand-knitted wearable! Without further adieu, may I present to you my Heart Break Camisole!

The cami on the hanger.

The cami modeled by yours truly.

I used I-cords straps instead of the intended crochet straps. Also i did the oopsy-tie straps. Hopefully no one pulls it off!

Being a female engineer is somewhat a Catch-22 situation. You are thrown into a community of guys but many are just nerdy, studious type that is not worth dating!

Gotta love what people put up in forums !

and it wasn’t me!  Haha…

December 1st was Alex’s birthday. We should have been celebrating that in Bangkok among friends but what to do, things do not always turn up as you expected. Since that was a bummer, Alex and I decided to do a little ‘paktor‘ session on his birthday. The whole movie and meal thing. It has been quite a while since we did that.

We turned up at Midvalley rather early ~ 10am because we did not want to get trap in the traffic. Although it was a Monday but since it is the school holidays, better not chance it. Good thing too. The whole mall was behaving as though it was the weekend. Upon reaching the shopping centre, we went straight to the movie counter to get our tickets to the latest James Bond flick, Quantum of Solace despite all our friend and colleagues giving bad/mediocre reviews about it. I for one, wasn’t that interested since Bond is some ruffian in blond! (very biased) But since it is Alex’s birthday, must give the man his choice.

For brunch, we decided to go to this very quaint looking shop in The Gardens called The Yogitree. The shop’s concept is about marrying good, organic food with yoga. Definitely a lifestyle shop catering to a niche market. Although we were there for brunch, the crowd was beginning to pick up. In my opinion, very health-conscious looking ones too.

I ordered their spaghetti with roasted Portobello mushrooms. Very delicious. The amount of cheese and olive oil was just right. Too much it will have been overwhelming and spoil the taste.

Birthday boy wanted something hearty (read: meaty), so he settled for the cheeseburger. The patty was something that he really enjoyed saying that he can taste the meat rather than just the seasoning in our regular McD’s.

To wash all that food down, we had this lovely rose bud & oolong tea. Came in the lovely see-through pot. The tea had a very lovely aroma and was very soothing to the throat. Must get some of these rose buds to make tea at home. The most amazing thing is that the cup is not hot to touch.

After the meal we had some time to ‘jalan-jalan’ before our movie started. Since it is now Advent, Christmas decorations are everywhere. If last year Midvalley had a very elegant theme, this year they are really have the little ones in mind when they decided the theme. This year looks like they are bringing the circus to town!

A friend commented that the clown looks very much like a traditional Indian dancer!

All in all it was a good day for both of us. We did feel like those nearly-forgotten dating days

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