Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Masakan Negeri Sembilan.

... as if I don't get enough of 'em at home at my mom's. There would always be at the very least, 1 masak lemak dish served for dinner almost daily at my mother's. Just because I get them all the time at home, that doesn't mean I won't eat them outside at restaurants/stalls when it is "Nasi Campur" time. Lunch time today, we had Negeri Sembilan dish at this Restoran Rose 911 in Kampung Pandan.




Plenty of choices, not limited to Masak Lomak Cili Api (M.L.C.A from here onwards).


Menu and Price Listing, not that anybody refers to it I don't think.

What we had - Siput Sedut (M.L.C.A), Daging Salai (M.L.C.A) {- this dish apparently is really a Negeri thing, I didn't know, until Mdm L told us that she has never seen nor tried this dish ever before as she is from Perlis! OMG!!!} , Sambal Udang, Kacang Panjang Goreng, Tempe and Telur Masin though I myself didn't touch the salted egg, because I am not so into it.




On my plate - yes I had the prawns even though they were rather small and the degree of freshness were unknown! So far so good, no allergy reaction as I am updating now.

Finished off everything as usual - except for the Siput Sedut shells obviously ha!ha! Oh by the way, Mdm L also did not touch the Siput Sedut because she couldn't eat them, not doesn't eat them, just couldn't eat them, not able to "sedut" the thingy out. Pity!!! Ha!ha!ha!

Note to self: must teach kids to eat and try everything under the sun, siput sedut and daging salai included!



Monday, November 02, 2009

Zarif's 2nd concert

This year is Zarif's second year in kindergarten and last Sunday was his 2nd Annual Concert. He has been practising for months, and has been really looking forward to that big day. Zaim was just 5 months old last year, this year exactly 12 months older, he came to witness his brother's big day too. It was held at the same hall as last year. Zarif's performance this year is called Agidoo.

R.E.A.L Kids Annual Concert & Graduation (for 6 year olds) 2009

Parent, grandparents and siblings taking their seats. Zaim spotted a little baby a few rows ahead of our seat and decided to check out.

Quite a big hall. We came in on time, but somehow others came even earlier and we couldn't brave the crowd to get to anywhere near the front half of the hall. Sigh!
The Programme Booklet - "Let's Get Real".

Zarif's item was the 11th - 2nd item after the 1st half intermission. I thought it was a long wait last year when his performance was before the intermission. This year was even longer, and we had Zaim. It was a very very long wait. Luckily Zaim was ok, just had to take him out of the hall now and again and let him run around.

Waiting!
A performance from the 4 year olds. Cute!

Love the puffy dresses.

This little girl is soooo adorable!

I think this was the 3 year old -Pre-pre Schoolers, yes they have such category.

During intermission, the parents to the 4 year olds are allowed to collect their kids from the class teachers. So I took that chance to dash up front with Nayli, to grab a seat nearer to the stage.
This performance was called DNA, a mandarin song by that name I guess.

Hey, I shot that leap! Cool eh?

Zaim's class's turn. He wasn't the little MCs this year, he was quite upset
about it, but it was just to be fair to others.

video
A short video - Agadoo 1, shot by Nayli, my little protege.

During his performance, I ran up front to get an even closer shot of my boy! Can you spot Zarif swinging away?

In full force.

Clap! clap! clap!


Swing it baby!

The girls.
All the girls upfront now.

Wohoo!!
To the left to the right jump up and down and to the knees
Come and dance every night sing with a hula melody
Peek-a-boo!
Agadoo doo doo push pineapple shake the tree

Agadoo doo doo push pineapple grind coffee



video

Video 2 - Agadoo


video

Video 3 - Agadoo

Taking a bow.

Hurray! Well done, Orchid Class and Teacher Eunice!!

Another performance - with a 60's feel.

Complete with props.

Boy can these kids shake. We didn't stay long, because it was way past Zaim's lunch time and he was getting restless. We left the hall soon after Zarif's performance and waited at the canteen. There were 4 more classes after Zarif's then it was the graduation ceremony for the 6 year olds. It was quite a long wait till then, the 5 year olds were not released until after the graduation. We had to kill time, amusing Zaim while waiting or was it the other way round.

Ready for lunch.

Open up Zaim.

Yumm!

A picture here.

And a picture there.

Zaim was "released" and he had fun running everywhere.

Up and down.

Ooops a little off balance sometimes still.

But he picked himself up again cheerfully.

Followed by a bottle of milk.

Nayli's shot, not bad for composition huh!

Nayli taking a picture of us with the D60, I was quite worried that she might drop it.

Nayli taking a picture of Zaim - Zaim posing for the camera.

Much later Nayli went to peep to see what's going on in the hall.
The graduation ceremony is over, they are singing the School Song,
Auld Lang Syne and Heal the Word.
Hurray, the superstar is out, finally.

I did it Mama!

With Shasha.

Me and my kids :-). Well done Zarif, you have another year to go!

Peace! Zarif and Lokman.


Now he is famished. We went straight to KLCC for lunch.

Super duper hungry.

We were here till late in the evening, had a couple of things to get. Zaim slept and woke up again. Amused himself in the play area, while waiting.

A long and wonderful day it was.



Not our usual Saturday.

Last Saturday, we woke up to a wet wet day. Nobody was in the mood to go swimming that day. Even though by 8 ish, the rain already stopped, though the sky was still overcast, and it's pretty wet and gloomy outside. Those pre-Zaim days, we would have probably gone back to bed for a good 2-3 hours more, but with the little munchkin up and about at around 6:30a.m that is out of the question. Soon after he was awake, he needed to be bathed - an immediately if you know what I mean. There were a few things on my to do list that morning.

First stop was to stop by our house, to pick-up this and that, the kids on the other hand had other plans. When they saw the toys that they have left behind, the realised that they do miss some of them after all. They picked up whatever that they could manage. It was Zaim's first time seeing all the stuff, he was still too small before to understand anything. He was amused at everything that he saw, including Nayli's Dora's Cottage. They managed to play a little bit, before they were rushed them out of the house to attend to the 2nd item on my list.




At 17 months, they are still not gender sensitive to toys.


Hey, Dora!!


Let's arrange this way over there!


2nd stop - grocery shopping, we were out of milk amongst other things.

Taking pictures in a hypermarket, only me!!!

Took Jack a while to get used to his happy snappy wife. For better or worse... :-)

By the time, we got everything on the list it was already lunch time. So, we had to grab something quick and fast and good (as in yummy, not super healthy obviously).
Yumm!
Zaim loves eating by himself.

Happy as a hippo!!

Mmmmmm!

The food doesn't only go into his mouth unfortunately. After lunch we went home and unpacked the groceries, perform the Zohor prayers then we were off again to the barber (for Zarif and Papa) and to the hairdresser for the rest.

After much contemplation on my part, I decided it's time to chop off Nayli's lovely long locks, that I never have ample time to braid and style every morning for school. Somehow, this time, when I suggested she is ok about it immediately. I guess she is ready for something different plus she said she has seen a couple of the older girls in school wearing shorter hair styles. Perhaps its "in" now, in schools.


One loooonnng last look.

Another one.

Are you sure girl?

Someone really doesn't care that her sister is about to make and earth shattering decision over here because he spotted a cat outside the shop. Cattttt!!!! Here kitty kitty kitty!!!!


The moment of truth. Once you are on the chair, wrapped like this, that's it.
There's no turning back.
Aaaarrrghhhh! It's gone!
There's no turning back now! Like it or not.
Last few strands of her long locks :-(

Ta daaaa the new Nayli.

Ooops, look who's turn it is now! Zaim needed a bit of trimming here and there cause I made a bit of a mess 2 weeks back. It was really bad actually, so we needed a little repair. Zaim was surprisingly quiet and ok. Looks like it'll be easy from now on. We would just head to the hairdresser the next time Zaim needs a haircut.

Sleepy maybe?

Totally behaved himself throughout.


He did get a little bit distracted by the sound of the hair dryer on another customer. After the hair cut, sorry no picture of the big boys, (cause obviously Jack will not take pictures at the barbers!!! ) it was already time for Zaims' meal. I made a quick spinach soup for him to be eaten with rice. Then it was bath time for everyone and we need to get ready to go out for dinner, ehem! My belated birthday dinner at The Apartment, KLCC.


This is our first time here actually. We have never even been to the one at The Curve. So, it really was quite a gamble in terms of food quality and service, though the menu looks quite enticing online. You would get the very same looking menu once there, whilst the children had their very own, as the one shown below, taken by the kids. Even thought they had about 5 main meal choices for the children, 2 was not available that night. The kids settled for the sausages and mini burger.






While waiting for our orders, we were served with this lovely warm foccacia, with what I believe is Pesto Sauce, yummy! We loved it, even the kids.


Zarif and me, while waiting for our food to arrive.

Zaim eating the foccacia.

Zarif's Mini Burger, not so mini after all.
Nayli's sausages.
Our Appetiser 1 - Clam & Mussels cooked in the apartment style sauce.

Our Appetiser 2 - Portobello Mushrooms - not cheap but not dissapointing.
{Sorry about the picture quality though.}

We didn't offer him the sausages thought that it would be too hard for him to chew. However, ever so swiftly, Zaim managed to grab one from Nayli's plate and happily chomped away.

Zarif is always glad that he is not served rice for his meals.

Papa's Girl.



My order - Cod fish with Aoli. I liked it.
It would have gone down even faster had I not had those appetisers.

The Lamb Rack for Jack.

Closer look at the lamb.

Free desserts for the kids.
There was a lovely sitting area just a foot away from our table.
So the kids happily played there while we finished our meal.

Enjoying ice-cream. Zaim is glad to have ice-creams coming from both sides.
Oh, one thing I have to mention. When the kids were playing at another sitting area a bit further away from us, I noticed that the guy behind the drinks bar cutting some apples and took it on a plate somewhere. We were surprised to find out later, they were meant for my kids! Isn't that nice? Good food, nice ambience, family friendly, good service, friendly staff & not packed on Saturday nights. I'm coming back to this place.


Thursday, October 29, 2009

Guess what came in the mail today?


Something unexpected came in the post for me today. Well truthfully, I am expecting this package but only sometime next week. However, it arrived much earlier. I love good surprises like this. I have been wanting to come up with this Photobook for quite sometime but have been stalling. At first it was the issue of which pictures to photobook, shall I do a collection or a particular subject. Since the last Hari Raya, I took quite a lot of pictures, I thought of giving it a shot. I didn't spend much time on it. I didn't even post in a lot of texts. Finally on Monday, I managed to finalised everything and sent it out. Unexpectedly, it arrived today.That was really quick. The result? I am satisfied with it totally. Love it! Will be doing more of this I'm sure.


The package.

Ta-daaa

I was quite nervous to flip the pages initially.

Some I had pictures as the background.


Some I chose just plain background.
This photobook, is even better than a normal photo album I think. It just requires a wee bit of investment, financial and time mostly. With a little bit of thought and love, it can be a real worth while thing to have. Think you want to give it a try check photobook.

Birthday Lunch at Low Yat??

I had my birthday lunch on my birthday itself at Low Yat Plaza. Another reason to be grateful on my 35th birthday actually. I have been wanting to get to this place for ages! And I mean ages, (to think in years!!!). The reason is I needed to get another external hard disk. When supposedly a birthday lunch with colleagues were postponed since the organiser a.k.a Miss Tabby Pretty was on sick leave (on my birthday too!), I jumped at the chance to go to Low Yat when Fida (a.k.a Pn. Fida Towkey Kambing) said she was going with another friend to get a computer.




I can understand why gadget freaks / geeks LVoe this place! Me? Hey, I'm neither, I'm a confirmed Shopaholic so anything goes, even external hard drives!!! :-) Since Fidah has arranged to go with a friend, I needed another partner, you know 2's a company, 3's a crowd thing... I managed to get Azleen to join, apparently she has been planning to get a new laptop/netbook too, so I called the right person at the right time! Gosh, where did all their money come from, really?

The Ground Floor

Azleen checking out one netbook after another.

A closer look at the SAMSUNG, very nice, if only they had it in black - not that I was looking. Visited a few shops, but we kept going back to one, because the Salesperson was nice & cute :-). Yup, we were guilty of being "look-alistic". Once the choices were getting a bit much and Azleen became totally confused, we took a lunch break. The only thing that we could see from the escalator was this Kopitiam.


It was almost empty, so good cause we were famished. We ordered the Set Lunch which had this tomyam noodles, kaya toasts and Lime Juice. Nice!



Eating up before making the big decision. In the end, we did go back to that one particular shop and bought that particular netbook. Whilst, waiting for the shop to configure her PC, we went to look out for a wireless broadband package.

Deciding on a package.

Still deciding.

Another thing that would be nice to have, have been in my wishlist for quite sometime. Anybody want to get me one of these? Digital Photoframe, I LVoe!!!! I also managed to check out the BB pricing here, not bad at all. Hope I'll be coming back here to get it soon.