Xmas week...

Not sure if anyone else noticed that the Monsoon period is rather dry this year..
Anyway, that's good for all of us trying to have some fun in the last 2 weeks of the year.
Was hoping to go to a nice restaurant to celebrate our 10th anniversary, but BC was not keen. So being a thoughtful mummy & wife, suggested we go somewhere casual but fun.. picked "Mykii" in Holland Village, which is a new Greek-inspired restaurant with white-washed interior brightened up by sofa seats lined with ocean-blue cushions. very refreshing decor.. we love it!
Cocktails are drinks are also impressive, but food is not something to wow about.. there's effort to use fresh meditarranean ingredients, taste is ok, but portion is small, and variety is not impressive.Would be a nice place to come for a drink, and order some food as a side, rather than a dinner place. But to pick one dish.. .it would be either the Baby rib, or the Prawn Caserole (smaller than expected serving).
Saturday was the usual.. Art Class for Yinghong, and BC and I managed to picked up some stuff from Beeyean's place, dashed to eat Katong Laksa at Ceylon road, before I went back to fetch the girl. Her artwork is really beautiful and she looks so happy working on it. Think children are most childlike and innocent when they are doing art & craft....

JiuzhaiGou - other pictures

Picturesque JiuZhaiGou

JiuZhaiGou Natural Reserve Park truly feels like a paradise.. with all the different lakes, streams, rapids, and waterfalls along the long walking trail, and 9 preserved Tibetan villages (thus the name "jiu zhai" which means "nine tribe villages" in Mandarin). Our day long trekking tour to the various scenic spots (heavily serviced by the park buses with guides) in JiuZhaiGou, 3500 metres above sea level, was followed by a Tibetan dinner hosted by a Tibetan household and a cultural show.

more pictures from Chendu Holiday

We were so impressed with the JiuZhai Paradise Hotel that we took so many pictures...

My Holidays in Chengdu....

The rest of our holidays in Chengdu.. sigh.. wasted quite a lot of time.
* Domestic flight to Jiuzhaigou was delayed 25 hours .. boarded the flight 3 times in between, and spent 6 hours in a incredibly shabby hotel, and spent a night in a slightly better hotel. Was supposed to reach Jiuzhaigou on Monday afternoon, but reached there on Tuesday afternoon instead. But once we are on the way from airport to the hotel -- JiuZhai Paradise (JiuzhaiTianTang) -- the scenery rewarded us handsomely... making all the trouble worthwhile.
The next day was even better... a full day in the nature reserve park .

* We went through lots of trouble after that to rearrange our return flights etc. and thanks to Zhipeng and Yangchun, we finally got those settled. The only remaining full day in Chengdu was rather fun too -- went to the Panda Base and saw many "toddler" pandas in a huge cot (no photo-taking allowed there); followed by a stroll in WenShuFang (WenShu Square) area; and a dinner at "Lao Ma" hotpot restaurant where they had a stage with "Bian Lian" performance. This place consists of 3 levels of restaurant area, and a 4th level for tea-drinking (with dim, soothing lights almost like those in a pub), and a 5th level dedicated to displaying antique and cultural display including exhibits that illustrate the daily lives of Chinese people in the past decades..very interesting!

*Our last day in Chengdu, we had a long and nice breakfast at the Tex-Mex grill restaurant (where we'd been there twice before for dinner!) , then ventured to the "Renmin" park to have tea at "He Ming" teahouse. The park also has an area with children rides.. quite fun! But we had a panicky episode when we tried to get a cab back to the hotel to pick up our luggage before heading to the airport -- couldn't get a taxi for almost 45 minutes!
So by the time we got home ... we were really glad.. but still.. am happy that I went for this holiday...

Day 1 in Chengdu

Thought I should put down my thoughts before I forget..
chengdu greeted us with a fine sunny weather, 9 degrees celcius. BC's colleague -zhipeng took off to fetch us from the airport to the hotel --- a unique old style si-he-yuan format hotel named "jing li ke zhan" in "jing li" cultural street, right next to "Wu Hou Ci" (temple for ZhuGeLiang).
Took a walk along jing li street... was so much fun! There is even a starbucks here.
This place is full of street stalls selling traditional crafts -- "chui tang" (blow candy), "tang hua"(drawn candy), bo-si tang (almost like the dragon-whiskers candy) which we bought a box to try.. lovely..like that it's coated with soy been powder so theres this lovely aroma of it, and not too sweet.
Dinner was a "hong xing jiu jia" (Red Apricot restaurant) near Zhipeng's home. Traditional Szechuan fares... yummy! I realied the authentic dan-dan mian does not taste any bit like the ones we have in singapore. No sweetness at all, just spicy and numbness..
Went over to zhipeng's apartment after dinner to meet his wife and daughter.
Got back to hotel, but none of us felt like showering, cos the water is sooo cold. the heater takes a long time to heat up water. Day 2 will be a day to visit Le Shan Da Fuo... will update again.
Pictures to follow..

Fun Week

Did a couple of fun things this week....
* Met Alicia for lunch on her Birthday ... too bad I have not got a satisfactory present for her yet, so need to "otang" a bit and pass her later. But of course she wouldn't mind, since her "Baby" already blew her away to cloud nine with the romantic evening he planned for her... heeee...
* Met Ching for a quick and short dinner in Century Square, and had a nice chat. The super-mum-wife view a few furniture shops at one go, and signed her lease document for the rental house during the day.
* Went with Angela to meet our client for lunch.. was fun chatting about parenting..
* After-work drinks with Yvon,Joe,Ouiyoung,Eepin,Royce... talked about so many things...
* Roller-bladed with BC and Ying hong on saturday morning, followed by our usual breakfast at Cafe Cartel (took a long time to vote for Han's but still ended up at Cafe Cartel cos the girl wanted it.. sigh) . Yinghong attended Geoff's (one of her best playmate in our condo) birthday party (the play started long before the party) , and everyone had so much fun.
* Went to Mustafa early in the morning .. 8am! Yinghong had never been so motivated in the morning..... woke us up, and headed straight to the bathroom to brush her teeth, washed face and went to change and got ready within 15min! Mission? Went to Mustafa to buy her new School bag... Then we had roti prata at a corner Coffee shop, washed down with Teh Tarik and Milo Dinasaur... SHIOK!
Ahhh.... so much fun for a week... getting ready for the next....

Back from Bangkok.... before the Protests!!!

So glad we went on the bangkok trip, was really fun.. and more glad we got back on last Saturday midnight, right before the last push by the PAD to overturn the government. Can't imagine getting stuck at the airport and not able to return.. :(
What did we do in bangkok? Mostly shopping.. not so much of eating.. a bit of sight-seeing (Wat Pho, Grand Palace, Wat Arun), and enjoying taking the hotel's private boat transfer and the sky train. Yinghong will always remember the visit to Clyde, June and Tammy at their home where she had a great time playing with their silk terrier, Sherry. She must be the only dog that eats Vegatables!!! This dog will do anything you ask her to do just for a bite of long bean!
The last day was spent at Chatuchak market, and I am surprised Yinghong could endure the heat and walk , and actually enjoyed shopping there. Bought lots of those imitation LeSportsac little coin purses for use as goodie bags gift at her upcoming birthday party. Overall we had an exciting and fun time!

2nd week of November

Yinghong was still having a cough, but still excited to go for her Salsa competition at ChongPang C.C. It's tiring for both of us (I got the flu from her too!) to stay there from 10:30am till 6pm. But she had fun performing her 2 mins of Salsa and Reet Petite dance. Most of the children have proper costumes...glittering,colourful, tight-fitting dresses... quite an eye-opener for us. Yinghong only had her tight pink T-shirt (hand-decorated by her dear mummy) with her black skirt.. she looked great though!
I didn't bring my video cam.. which is a big regret (of course BC scolded me lah.. )as many of the young dancers are soooo talented and put up such good performances of Cha-cha, Jive, Rumba.. wished I could take dancing class and dance on a regular basis too!
The next day we slept till late, and took it easy. Only went down to the function room for a couple of hours during lunch to celebrate En Xuan's 1st birthday. En xuan is the second daughter of BC's niece... which makes her Yinghong's niece!
The cake looked lovely! (I didn't wait till they cut the cake.. went back to nap in the afternoon, the flu making me really drowsy)
Rested well.. feel much better today though my voice turned very hoarse from all the coughing.... but should be well enough to fly off on Wednesday for our short holiday in Bangkok! :)

1st week of November

Have been sick the last week, so have not been updating this blog.
Thought would post some pictures taken during the first weekend of November, during our "expedition" to Changi Beach Park cycling path to try out the new "Tandem" bike pole that Boon Chong ordered from the U.S. I even took a few video shot while cycling on my own bike.. hee.. very skillful!
Yinghong also had a great time at XinMin's post-exam celebration party (supposed to be a belated birthday party since her birthday was during exam period). As usual XinMin's mum -- BJ -- organized team games for the children, the first being a challenging "Mathematics SNAP" where the teams need to compete to work out solutions of multiplication sums...sounds scary, but still, the kids had fun.. BC and I were glad to be able to leave YH there and sneaked out to William's studio for an hour to help him fix up his new laptop. While there, I conveniently helped myself to some of William's silver, glittery ribbons.... which I used to decorate YH's plain pink T-shirt which she was wearing for her salsa competition on 15th Nov. Hee.. saved me the time and hassle to buy sequins from Arab Street....
More updates on that in the next post...

Last 2 weeks of October

Sorry blog, have been neglecting you..
Nothing special in the past 2 weeks, but we have been to 2 parties -
1 bbq party at Meiping's Jalan Kayu house, and again she proves to be a great cook and host.. everyone had fun, and yinghong played with a girl her age (but much smaller in size than her) -- Hannah, and we all had fun just watching the family of gerbils in Meiping's fish tank, which are really the offspring of our gerbils.
Yesterday we gathered at "The Clearwater" condo function room for my cousins' birthday party. Simple party but all the kids had great fun making their own balloon creation and playing at the playground. Also posted a photo here of my latest favourite --- BBQ pork ball with dry vermicelli -- a vietnamese dish from Viet Express, at China Square Central... soooo yummy! But I can't say everything there is good. At least a bit disappointed with their Beef Pho and the sugar cane prawn.
adios... that's all for now.. will update again with more fun things next month!