Before The Fearsome Tiger Year

I'm in SEGAMAT! It's been a really long time since I last came home. I guess, 3 months? Yeah, I didn't manage to arrange a time to come back, so it kinda delayed until the new year break. So since now I have all the time in the world to blog, let's see...

Last weekend, me and Sally decided to celebrate our Valentine's Day earlier. No choice ah, since it's on the same day as CNY and I gotta go back to my family and spend some time in Malacca. But yeah, she's still gonna join me in Segamat Resort on the 17th. Meantime, we'll just stay at home and miss each other. LOL.

On Saturday, we went for a movie in the evening. We watched Tooth Fairy. Erm, okok lah, not a very serious movie but it managed to tickle my funny bone abit. After that, we went to Tao's Restaurant for dinner. We needed good and affordable food, so I did abit of research on the web and found that this place has got quite a few good reviews. Modern pacific cuisine. Yum yum, take a look..

Hmm, I wasn't looking at the camera :P
A couple of refreshing love potion.
Bacon and mushroom gratin.
Fruit and salmon salad.
Mushrooms! Sally loves 'em.
Ah.. They call it the rose apple tea.
But it's not made from the rose apple fruit.
It's just rose and apple mixed together.
Very refreshing nonetheless.
Cream mushroom and sharkfin melon herbal soup.
Very nice and tender pork rib.
Highly recommended!
Sally had a little lamb... little lamb... little lamb
Poached pear.
Cheese cake, which is not as good as Sally's.
Ok, so as usual, like last year, I went to the florist again to get some red roses. When I was at the counter, I saw this really cute, white teddy bear. Being my usual self, I gave it a gentle pat on the head. LOL. The lady behind the counter found it amusing and thought that I liked it, so she brought me to see a few "rose patterned bear" to go with the flowers. Well since this is the first time I've heard of such plush toys, I thought it'd be a really nice surprise for Sally.

On Sunday morning, I went to collect them before I headed to CCK. The florist kept both the flowers and the bear in the refrigerator. I wonder why. Was the weather too hot for the bear? Did the bear refuse to let go of the flowers? Ok, never mind. Thankfully the journey was bearable, unlike last year when I sent flowers to Sally on her birthday. Ok not gonna repeat the story.

Sally looks happy with her flowers and bear.
Aww... Forever friends!
I've got a gift and card too! Luxury bed sheets :D
For lunch, we met up with Sally's friends to celebrate Juliana's belated birthday at Watami in Central. The food was good. Lian did a good job selecting all the dishes and you should really see her kung fu style of picking. Extremely fast. Give her the menu and she goes like "I want this, this, this, this and this" and before you know it, all the yummy food appeared! This one must learn from her ah. Very convenient. Usually I have a hard time trying to decide what to eat.

Juliana making a million-dollar-wish.
Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the food we ordered in Watami. So yeah, that's about our weekend. I'll blog again after CNY so hopefully there'll be more stories to report!

Another Year Is Almost Gone!

Wheeeeeeee! Time FLIES!

Another year is almost gone now. Kinda speechless actually.

Ok, we had a few gatherings because we're all in a holiday mood. That's a good thing. Sometimes we need these occasions otherwise it'll be quite difficult to catch up with everyone.

I think I'll start with Fang's birthday. We celebrated earlier on a weekend. Went out with Sally and a group of friends for a drink. I think that birthday girl looks kinda happy. Of course we're all happy too ;)

There IS a reason behind that smile! ;) *ahem*
On X'mas eve, we're given half day off so I met up with Sally in the afternoon and we started our gift exchange immediately :P Haha! No need to wait for x'mas :P Too eager!

Mine's with the small small writing
I've got my kick ass Razer Naga!
And Sally's got her Coach!
And as usual, my second little surprise for Sally!
Some chocos on X'mas to sweeten it ;)
Later in the evening, we went over to Huili's place. Sally and myself had our dinner before heading there so we just played some games. Ok well I didn't really play because I can't drink (yeah, drinking games) so I ended up as a time-keeper :P It's kinda exciting too. All I have to do is look at the hourglass and scream "Yo, time's up!" and see those disappointed faces LOL.

ZhiWei took the photo so he's not inside
The girls also had a gift exchange session. And oh yeah, we did a count down too. But not sure if Huili's time was accurate onot :P Looks like we're the only bunch of rowdy people screaming Merry Christmas in Punggol. Too quiet leh :-/

Then finally on X'mas itself, we hang out Xin Lerh's place for dinner. Nice place and alot of yummy food and desserts. Everyone promised to exercise after that but not sure how many actually did it :P Definitely not me hehe. Totally unforgivable.

Kinda like the decorations :P Got X'mas feel!
Trying to make "popiah" but turns out to be slightly squarish
Cheesecake and fruits
This weekend will be the end of the year 2009. Woo hoo. Still holiday mood. Then Chinese New Year. Yey, another week long break. But once that's over, it's gonna be full steam chu chu train ahead.

Let's hope we all get a good year ahead. As for this year, let's try to remember all the good stuffs, throw away all the bad ones, and pass all the smelly ones to your enemies.

Enjoy the last few days in the year folks!

Food For Thought

Sally preparing the dishes
When I left GE, I told Sally I'll make it a point to see her on weekdays at least once a week. We used to see each other everyday, so in order to keep a healthy, loving relationship, some things gotta be done. That's when the whole "Sally's cooking tonight!" thing came about. I go over to her place, she cooks for me :D

Now, I kinda think that I should tell the whole world that Sally's done an extraordinary job. She cooks great dishes, I tell you - especially her humble-looking soup, damn good ah! And cooking for someone shows a great deal of love. So, really, she's been such a wonderful girlfriend.

Some fish :D Hehe!
Humble-looking but delicious-tasting soup
When I look back at some of the photos of the dishes she cooked, I think I should at least post a short blog about it. All those efforts must not go unnoticed and I appreciate every single bowl of soup she has cooked.

And not every guy out there gets these kinda treatments from their girlfriends :P Muahaha..

So yeah, love ya darling Sally!

Our Second KL Trip

Yep, our second annual trip! Haha! Our stay in KL is slightly longer, but that's because we deserve it :P

We flew in this time because taking a coach would mean a longer journey, so we thought we should try out something different. Turns out to be quite good :D The flight itself was like 30mins or so, and then the KLIA express train to KL Sentral was around 25mins so it's all good.

Our flight tickets :D
On the KLIA Express train
Imagine taking a 5-hours bus journey. Whew.

We stayed in Corus Hotel, which isn't the best hotel out there, but it's really convenient for us because we wanna run up and down. Hehe. After checking-in and rested for abit, we walked around Bukit Bintang. It was like a shopping heaven for Sally but the only place there that excites me was Low Yat. Hehe, big difference huh? :P Hahaha.

When I was studying/working in KL, I don't really hang out in B.B. but I've definitely come here a few times. Since then, alot of things have changed and everything looks almost new to me. Well, except Sungei Wang. Yeah, same old Sungei Wang. It was so nostalgic even when we just stepped into the building. Same colour, same smell :) Aww..

Inside Pavillion, but can't see what's behind :P
Christmas decoration outside Pavillion
Oh yeah, and we bumped into Greg and his girlfriend.

But as usual, that whole B.B. area is totally crowded and when it started raining, the traffic was horrible. There's mud and water even on the pedestrian walkways so it's kinda difficult to move about. Not surprised. Nobody bothers about pedestrians in Malaysia anyway. LOL :P

Oh yeah, somehow, that kinda reminds me of something which I MUST say. The first time I came to Singapore - and the first time I took the escalator here, I felt that it was abit ... too fast. No seriously, the escalator in Singapore is FAST. When I go up an escalator in Malaysia, I can almost doze off.

It ... is ... very ... the ... slow.

Yeah, or maybe it's just me. But try it for yourself. And the LRT .. it smells. The lights are dim, maybe because they don't bother to clean it. And when you take a train, it's almost like you're in a dark/horror movie setting. Like from Max Payne? Have you seen it? Yeah something like that. Ok enough complains. If you wanna read more, try this and see what I think about the KTM service in Malaysia on our first trip. Not gonna repeat the whole story again.

Anyway, on the same night, we went to Petaling Street. Weee, crowded as usual but we're there for the food! Unfortunately, quite a big part of it was closed down due to renovation. But guess what? We still managed to get this so called famous Air Mata Kuching, which is reaaally good. So good we bought 4 packets and 1 extra cup to drink while we waited for the famous Wantan Mee and famous Hokkien Mee. Nabeh, everything here seems to be famous.

Sally @ Petaling Street
Yeah, that's the famous Air Mata Kuching :D
I highly suspect all these famous stalls are self-proclaimed :P Don't trust them k? But the famous Wantan Mee is damn good. The char siew is totally heavenly!

Looks disgusting, but trust me it's reaaally good!
On Day 2, we hanged out at Sunway Pyramid to meet my ex-colleagues. Had Hong Kong food for lunch. Not too bad, but the star of the day is this cute little boy. Check him out! So cute eh?

LayKhuan and KiatHin's baby boy.
He kinda look more like his dad though :P
I kinda took a few photos of him but totally forgot about our group photo :-/ Too bad, gotta wait until next year then :P Hehehe. My fault. Right after lunch, we went shopping and then stopped by A&W for tea break. Yep, there's no A&W in Singapore so this is like our only chance to eat it!

Root beer float, curly fries and ice-cream waffles.
What else can be better?
Around 4pm, we headed back to prepare for my cousin's wedding dinner @ Hotel le Meridien. So yeah, this is the first time I introduce Sally to the family members on my dad's side. The food and ambience was really good and comfortable. And we've got a live band too. Here are some photos:

A quick couple photo before we left the hotel ;)
Together with my dad, mom and bro
Sally and mom after the dinner
Another couple photo after the dinner
Day 3! Our most exciting day, which we planned a Genting trip. We bought a 9am bus ticket and when we reached the station at exactly 9am, we saw the bus departing right before our eyes. Holy shit. A bus departing on time in Malaysia? I almost died laughing.

Fortunately, there was a couple of seats left on the 930am-bus so we took that instead. The bus journey was OK and it took us like 30mins to the Genting Skyway, which we then took a cable car up to Genting. Overall it was quite smooth and convenient.

Yeah we love couple photos!
Nope, not afraid of heights ;)
Feels like heaven!
The air up there is cold and refreshing but that whole place looks old and worn out. Again, I guess nobody bothers to maintain it. Even Sally mentioned that the colours of First World Hotel is dull. The theme park looks boring and totally lifeless.

We had lunch at "Restoran Good Friends" but I don't wanna be friends with them anymore because their food sucks. Dry and tasteless. Don't ever go there.

Good Friends? Well, it depends..
Ok lah, the claypot chicken rice is not too bad
After lunch we headed straight into the casino for some little exploration :D But that's when the problem starts. That whole damn casino is filled with smoke. Everyone is puffing off some cigarettes. We wanted to see the whole places and the games they play so we stayed about an hour, but Sally started coughing and choking on the smokes so we went out for some fresh.

Sally looking sick :P
Sally's coughing didn't get any better, even after we had some hot tea and went through her shopping-therapy. She looked sick and a fever came so we headed back to KL. I went out to buy some cough medicine for her, thinking that she'll be fine. But it didn't seem to help and she coughed throughout the night.

But as sick as she was, Sally still drag herself out so we could have dinner. And guess where we end up?

Sushi King! Who would have thought?
Golden Ball! I haven't had these for ages
Looks damn good right?
The next day, which is our last day @ KL, Sally seem almost strength-less to go shopping. Even her favourite malls failed to tempt her to walk in. We had a simple lunch @ Spring Garden and sat outside of KLCC for some fresh air. But again, there were lots of people smoking outside so it didn't really help.

Porridge. What choice does a sick person have? :P
My special fried rice (not sure if it's famous)
And some yummy soup!
Hmm... Nothing too special actually.
Finally when it was time to go fly back to Singapore, we headed back to KL Sentral for the oh-so-convenient KLIA express train. We checked in just in time and flew right back to Singapore. Sally went to see a doctor immediately when we got home. She was diagnosed with bronchitis and was given 2 days MC. Hopefully she'll get well soon!

At KLIA. Sally still look sick :P
Fantastic view from the sky
So yeah, that's our trip this time round. Fun and enjoyable. Only the last day was abit unexpected. But now I'm back to work and will be going full steam ahead in the coming weeks. Jia you ah!