Diplodocus

Sisters are a gods angels on earth.

The first time we do anything, can be the most joyous experience. Remember the first time you rode a bike? Or the first time you had ice cream? The first time you saw that sunrise in some long forgotten civilisation? Ok maybe that’s a bit over the top.

But it tends to stay with us, that first time experiences. No matter how hard you can try to forget, the one thing you cannot erase from your memory will be those firsts.

I remember the first time I met my sister, at how happy I was to discover that there was another human being  who could play with me. Teddies and dolls, and masak masak(which we play till today, eh Mrs Brown?). I had been living in Ipoh with the MonkeyCuz and longed to play with a girl my age, after all the robot and car games i was playing everyday.

Little did I know what a tomboy I would be meeting. At first we would fight and punch(she can throw quite a punch!) each other silly. It took a while for us to get along, and it probably happened after Flex had come into our lives.

The first time my dog Flex had found his way to our backyard and stole into our tiny hearts was on a Sunday morning while we were having breakfast. A tiny pup with brown fur and dark eyes looking up hopefully at the Diplodocus and in turn, her big brown eyes begging The Boss to keep the pup. That dog became a part of our lives that stayed  in our hearts till this day. And today, she has brought with her little Shimbhu the Guinea Pig, who is also as cute as a button.

I remember the first days she went to kindergarden. Tadika Ho, with her 2 tiny rabbit teeth sticking out and annoying me at every step of the way we took home when I had to bring her back. At least she combs her hair now.

Her first real home, rainbow houses, may they always be there waiting for you. And not forgetting her first beloved, Chemichu

I remember the  first time she fell in love, and we would have sleepless nights, whispering about the things she had said and done that day. Her sadness, fears and her joys became my own.

To the one person who I know I can share any secret with and would love and care for me no matter what I did. I have been truly blessed to have you in my life and heres to wishing Diplodocus a HappY 28^th birthday!

And as promised, heres to secret outings! Long live!

32 years of Grandeur

I happen to think that everyday is a celebration of life.

So when it comes to having a birthday party each year, I astound even myself and how small and simple I prefer that celebration to be. I suppose as you get older, you learn to appreciate what you have, even in the smallest way, as life can teach us, that anything can be lost on any day.

Anyways, as a token of appreciation for all the good things in life, I hereby present to you some of my favorite and most celebrated things(disclaimer:next birthday, the list may change):

1.    RT Pastry House

This cake house has been in existence for a couple of years now, having branches mushrooming across the klang valley. Their cakes are light, flavorful and very reasonably priced. So I was pretty happy when I got tricked(quite subtlely by the Y) into going to the E-Club(a.k.a pantry) at the office and finding the Pekster and Deviljoe hidden behind the partition with a Black Sesame cake for me. Lovely, ladies. Lovely

 

PY and Mua

Black Sesame cake

2.       Crepe Cakes 

Ok so maybe I have been a little too forthcoming with the things that I like(just look at this article for an example!). And most of the geng knows how much I like cake. I have asking around about the crepe cake made famous by a bakery in Melaka and also the Food Foundry in PJ. I tried the cake once in Seri Kembangan but it wasn’t fresh and the layers just stuck together instead of having the ‘melting effect’. So the Y decided to get me 2 pieces of crepe cake from a bakery in Kajang and Mei Mei and Amanda got me 2 from another bakery. 4 slices of crepe cake, maybe too much of something is not a good thing, but the cakes were wonderful. Hey it was my birthday, give me a cake-break.

3.       Coffee Joint

Starbucks and Coffee Bean are overrated(This my personal opinion and means to offence to anyone- especially Starbucks no 1 fan, Deviljoe). I have always preferred Gloria Jeans  and Domes, but the best coffee bars are the smaller ones, like Whisk(Subang Parade and OneUtama). So it was with great pleasure that I had the company of Sir Kakapipit to enjoy the coffee at the latest coffee bar in Cyberjaya, The Daily Grind.

4.    House Parties

Mom,Pop,little spiderman-dinosaur, Hema, Chiffon and of course the Diplodocus. What more do I need to ask for to have the best time? Do wish the Japa was around though, as I get a one day free pass to annoy the crap out of my little brother on my birthday. Maybe I could get a raincheck? Hmm

Mom went on a cooking spree

5.    The Shell Geng

These are some of my most favourite people on earth. The Pekster decided to have a small dinner at Hucks Café in Bangsar. And being one who is only too happy to meet new people and try new places, I was very excited to meet Konrad from Bavaria and see Ms C-bg try to flirt with him. Though it rained cats and dogs when I got the Yoda and made everyone late, it was definitely worth it to try this place.

                        http://grub-odssey.blogspot.com/2013/04/hucks-cafebangsar.html

6. Movie and shopping time

As we did last year, the Y and I got free movie passes for our birthdays, which is only 3 days apart, and this year we got to watch The Croods and after the show, we did what we love best, and got ourselves new shoes.

A hAppY

 7. Red Velvet Cupcake

Need I say more?

Thank you to all you guys who made my getting-wiser birthday more meaningful.

Cheers and Godbless you freaks.

A little help, Mr Watson?

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
Western Union telegraph company memo, 1877.

I read this interesting piece of article the other day. It said that people today would prefer to have all their communications done in the form of messages, either emails, sms, whats app, viber, chatz and what-have-you applications on their smartphones, instead on picking up their phones and dialing someone for a voice conversation

Apparently, in todays world, having someone call you can be deemed as intrusive. With many people leading very busy lives these days, they do not have the time nor space to have a chat.

I remember being a teenager and wishing that I had a phone in my room like some of the girls on Nickelodeon. It seemed like the coolest thing to have your girlfriends call you at every hour of the day and for us to discuss on how cute our new PE teacher was. Or which boy was the cutest and giggle like some mad cow disease induced teenagers. But I guess that’s all changed now, with technology being so advanced that teenagers can just LOL, IDK, SYL, BSB, NKOTB, ETC each other at any time.

I admit, yes, maybe sometimes at work, I too do not answer every call I get. But I will always try my best to call back the non-intrusive friend and can only hope that my return call does not intrude her/his time.

Imagine a world in 20 years. You would not even know how your child sounds like. Or your mom. Or even your boss if we all decide that we can just work from homes and save costs on offices.

So much for centuries of civilization and technological evolution. Thank you, Mr AG Bell

The end for Social Graces?

The dictionary defines gracious as; "being pleasantly kind, benevolent and courteous."

I suppose in today’s world, it is not easy to define what being gracious actually mean.  Over time I have heard and read about so many Malaysians ungraciousness on the roads, in malls and even in public toilets and what is more amazing is that like in some third world countries, we are becoming a race that accepts the faults in society  and as is the miracle of human nature, at some point, adapt to it.

An experience I faced last Saturday was a definite prove of this. The Diplodocus and I decided to head to the famous mall, Mid Valley Megamall, and if it was not for our brother’s birthday the very next day, I would never have agreed to head there on a weekend. A trip down Zombie Ville would have been more pleasing.

After an excruciating wait, we finally spotted an Indian (national) and his family loading up their fairly new Nissan Sylphy. As cars were parked on both sides of the driveway, the sylphy had not much space to reverse to get out of his parking lot. Hence he did what any other one of his country man would do. He got his very excited wife to ‘watch the back’ and then went bottom-long into the car that was parked at the rear of his. The excited wife did the only thing she could do,  jumping a couple of feet in the air and trying to push the sylphy forward, unsuccessfully of course, and after a while,  realizing her effort was in vain, jumped into the passenger side and the company drove off, without a note of an apology to the owner of the Injured car.

But that’s not my only story here.

As the Sylphy was loading, we noticed a young, pleasant looking woman with the highest heels and tightest of jeans standing next to the Indian family.  The minute the car drove away, madam long legs decided to ‘book’ the parking lot for her boyfriend. In no mood for any more bad manners, we honked and managed to coax her out of the way for us to park. But after couple of meters of walking to the mall’s doors, the boyfriend decides to drive by and start shouting at the Diplodocus and me for having stolen his parking spot.

Now correct me if I am wrong, but since when do Malaysians actually practice ‘parking-via-human-standing-booking’? As a society, if we allow people to actually act this way, can one imagine the chaos it could create if all of us decided to act in the same manner?

Have a little social grace folks, it can go a long way.

Peace out.

Different expectations

The best date is with someone who can take you anywhere without touching anything but your heart. – Unknown

When I was in my 20s, most girls my age had a notion. A date was expected to be an affair where the guy asks a girl out and followed by some impressive dinner and coffee/drinks and movie. With elaborate show of feeling, balloons and throw in a couple of peacocks, and a girl is hooked.

The most elaborate proposal I have heard of was when the guy took the girl for some heli ride and the proposed to her as they were rounding the KL Tower, Komtar or somewhere similar.

Now what would have made that proposal more interesting is that if a bird had flown by at just that exact moment, being chased by something larger, an eagle perhaps..and the pilot sees the drama, trying to save the bird, opens a crack in his window and the eagle swoops in together and they circle the guy’s head and one lands on the fair maiden and there’s squawking and screeching and screaming and the guy is still trying to get his question across…

Over rated.

The most perfect date I can remember from my 20s was one where he bought us McD and we sat for hours gazing at the stars in an empty playground and talking about everything under the moon. It wasn’t much but then to me perfect dates aren’t the elaborate affairs people make them out to be, but the little things.

I recently had the opportunity to have a lunch with an amazing guy.  I have the most festive bunch of friends who love me to death, and wanting the 'outing' to be perfect gave me advice on where to have a decent lunch, what to wear and how not to smile like a zombie.

 

Probably the last advice came in handy.

I can only think of one way for it to have gone better, if we had a cup of tea in a coffeshop with yau char koay. Simple and sweet.

Or sitting and watching some birds circle a heli. Hmm.

Feb 13 Island Getaway in the clouds

So here we are. 5^th and last day on our Island Getaway.

We awoke to gloomy, grey and cloudy skies. It was almost as if the island itself was sad to say goodbye to us.

The rain started pelting down as we were having our breakfast at the hotel café and the clouds looming over the hills were so thick we couldn’t see even a single metal beam of the cable car, which was so obvious these few days past.

We collectively decided to head to town to finish up on our shopping. Diplodocus and I managed to get the coolest tees for the both of us and the Mickeyface, all in the same style. We couldn’t wait to try them on over the weekend when the Tiny was staying over.

A McCallan for the dad and our beloved Baileys for the liquer cabinet teamed with a bagload of chocolates and we were good to go. It was worrying that Kong Kong was still not feeling well and everyone headed back to the hotel for some quick packing and a little rest before check out.

The rain had lessened but the sky still hadn’t cleared at this point and practically begging for the clouds to clear, I decided to call the cable car company.  After 3 attempts, a friendly lady answered the call and told me that the ticketing counter had only just opened and that they may close again very soon if the weather did not improve. And so if we wanted to get on it, we needed to be there, like yesterday!

Rushing up the stairs (why is it always that the elevator doesn’t work when we are in a rush?), I excitedly told the Happy Family the good news. We hurried down to stuff our baggage into the Innova’s tiny boot space (should have rented a lorry with all the baggage we had. We might as well have stolen the whole town!) , and Mr Goblin drove as fast as he could to get us to the Cable Car. Of course we had to make a much needed pit stop at the Perdana Quay Petrol station.( And here I doubted we could have reached this fast if we had rented a lorry. Unless! Unless we could fit in some turbo charge V12 into the engine of the lorry. I bet it could work!)

Pitstop at the Perdana Quay with the fast and reliable Innova

There was no queue at the ticketing counter and even the queue to the ‘cars’ was relatively short. We had to go in sixes and there were numbered boxes showing us where to stand. All jumpy nerves, we got down onto the first station where Uncle K met some friends (is there anywhere in the world that this man doesn’t have acquaintances?? Maybe he is a politician in his free time?) Hopped onto the next carriage with Diplodocus to move to the 2^nd station and was mildly disappointed to note that the sky bridge itself was closed for maintenance.



The line up at the Cable Car



It was the first time I had ever stood so high off ground level(not counting my days as a toddler in Cameron Highlands) and I realized why I loved the hills and mountains so much. There was a sense of connection to a world that was so vast, so different and yet it was small and so similar in so many ways. The clouds were still rolling, and I literally mean rolling, over the hills and onto the unblocked atmosphere of the blue, blue ocean. The sight of them gliding away, right through us at some points, gives one a sense of peace that I haven’t actually felt in a really long time. The wind was really strong and it blew from almost every angle until at one point, I couldnt quite feel the cold anymore. The billowing was almost comforting, like holding my grandads hand all those years ago, and it felt almost as if it was trying to lift away every heartache I had ever had.

After a couple of hours of photo taking and admiring a man full of the coolest tattoos, we decided to take the descend from the hilltop. Any longer and our dearest Y might have been flown away by the strength of the winds. No idea why the Goblin and Uncle K suddenly decided that they loved capatis at this time but ignorance can sometimes be blissful.



Monkey see, monkey do?



On sea level again, and true to the Counter's earlier warning, the cable car was closed again.

We walked about the Oriental Village situated at the foot of the hill and were all mesmerized by a kid having a large green python wrapped around him for phototaking. Gotta be some brave fella, haggling the price of taking a pic with the snake with all those foreign tourists. Watching him as he expertly coiled the snake around a tourist and even holding up the head in the ‘correct’ way, I thought this is definitely some skill. I can’t even recall how to hold a rabbit and we grew up in a house that was more like a farm.

Duck Tours is available on certain times of the day at the Oriental Village. This is the amphibian vehicle used for the tours

It was already mid evening by the time we left the Village and after a lunchcumdinner at a seafood restaurant we found along the way, and a quickstop and Dataran Lang for the Y's sake, we headed to the airport.

 And to reality.

The ever-gorging geng

Buk Buk anyone?



Overgrown Pipit?

Its surely going to take me a long time, if ever, to forget the adventures and memories of this trip. From burying KK in the sand on the first day. Kong Kong- you made the perfect mermaid, but try to close those fins a little eh? To the joys of speaking to strangers for free mangoes, and actually receiving them!(good job Diplodo, just leave the cutting to someone else in the future) To the dramatic moments of Kong Kong’s illness and Diplodocus cutting a vein on her hand and making Uncle K panicked to kingdom come. To playing tag under the clear and starry skies, reminiscing a childhood long gone by.

It was definitely a good getaway, and for the Happy Family Members reading this, you guys rock!

Feb'13 Chap Goh Mei Island Getaway

The Lantern Festival in China is a festival celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month in the lunisolar year in the lunar calendar marking the last day of the lunar New Year celebration

 In the olden days, young people were chaperoned in the streets in hopes of finding love. Matchmakers acted busily in hopes of pairing couples. The brightest lanterns were symbolic of good luck and hope. As time has passed, the festival no longer has such implications. There is another tradition practiced, where the young maidens or spinsters would throw oranges inscribed with names and telephone numbers into rivers in search of a boyfriend. It is known by many as the Chinese version of Valentines’ Day.

So it is with this idea, that 5 hot and single ladies vacationing in an island decided to celebrate the Chinese Valentines Day in style. With our 2 beloved and ever handsome chaperones of course.


We managed to stroll around Kuah town and pick out some pretty dresses/parios for out special night out.

Telaga Harbour at night is the most perfectly romantic spot for such a night and we decided on Tapaz and yummiest Sangria at Bar Centro. The prices here isnt too expensive as they have dishes for sharing and the ambience is really nice.

Apart from being lured into almost stepping into cowdung by one of our chaperones( in a failed jealous attempt as I looked prettier than him), there was no disaster to be reported.
One odd thing though, the docked yatchts were similar to those we saw in the last visit 2 years ago.

The only unfortunate bit was that we had no oranges on us to throw into the yatchts. Couldnt even find a good sized coconut.

Dont get me wrong, we werent going to capsize the 'boat' but i think coconuts would have a better chance of being noticed than tiny oranges. They would rock the yatcht once they hit the floorboards and after all isnt KUKUNUT shake the best thing ever?