Am I trying too hard?

I don’t know…

Grad trip to UK-Cont’

So lemme continue my lil post on my humble little trip..yes, i mean HUMBLE…(hehe)

23-25 June

Setting out for our one week outing to other Europe countries. First stop we took the EasyJet flight to Paris. We stayed at the Marciano Hotel situated at Gare Du Nord and just minutes from the metro station. I wouldn’t say it’s a great fab hotel, it was just satisfactory without air-conditioning rooms and no electrical jug plus the baths are extremely small. However the location is great and restaurants and snack bars are just steps away. We went to quite a number of tourist attractions spot although not entering all of them, for example we did not climb the Notre Dame or stepped into the Louvre Museum as we (ricky n me) did during our trip last year but it was really fun yet tiring.

Fun at Paris

Views from the top of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc De Triumph

Then the next day we set out to DISNEYLAND…it’s where almost everyone’s dream place…where the prince and princess live happily ever after…ahhhh…well…it’s a really great place to visit as it suits all ages! Can see how thrilled my parents and my sis n bro-in-law looked when the parade showing off almost all the characters in the Disney’s animation! I’m happy too..looking at the happy fairy tales couple made me felt so much like crying on the spot…ops…

The entrance

Some silly pictures

25-27 June

We got up very early in the morning to catch our Ryanair flight to Rome. Seems like Rome is a never-to-miss-destination when travelling to Europe. We stayed at the hotel we once stayed last year, Auditorium Di Mecenate. A highly recommended lodging. We had two rooms which accommodated all 6 of us comfortably for two nights with a payment of 400+ Euro. Location is great, just 5 minutes away from the metro.

The first day we visited the Vatican City. As it closes at about 5pm, we then walked around with the reasonably accurate map which u can get them almost everywhere. We managed to find the Trevi Fountain and since it will only get dark at about 10pm during summer, we couldn’t get a glimpse of the night view, wasted. Then we had our dinner at an Italian Restaurant just below our hotel. Nice food but service was quite slow and quite expensive.

The next day we took a tour bus to minimise our walking, haha…and made our stops at the Colloseum, Piazza Navona (to visit the Pantheon) and other tourist spots. And yes the Colloseum has audio guides in mandarin…which my dad really enjoy listening to the commentary (save our effort to explain in an extreme blurry manner..hehe).

Clockwise from top left: Free very-cold-water almost everywhere, outside the Colloseum, Trevi Fountain, and another shot in the Colloseum.

Food Food Food

27-29 June

Our last stop was to Venice. A peace and quiet place. once we reached the airport, the first thing we did was to get ourselves some vaporetto tickets (water buses-ACTV). This would take you straight to the main island, Venezia and to other small islands like Burano and Murano. We rented two apartments, Residenza Al Cuore Di Venezia, for two nights at 500 Euro. This apartments located very near to the Rialto Bridge, the most frequent stop you would alight. The apartment owner, Hugo could not be any friendlier. Just adorable! Just 10 steps away from this apartment is a bar selling delicious Gelato. And within 10 minutes of walking you’ll reach the wet market where you could get the freshest fruits and other produce.

Venice is such a romantic place…although not much monuments or places to visit..but it’s definitely a goegeous place to stop for ice-cream or a drink and enjoy the beautiful sceneries.

Clockwise from top left: View from the Rialto Bridge, Gondola ride, super big meringues, and the beautiful river.

Ate at Ristorante Canal Grande situated at Riva Del Vin. I bet they have the nicest food there. Must taste their steam mussels, grilled fish and Tiramisu. yummy yummy!

The sceneries looked so much like oil painting! Heart melting!

30 June – 2 July

Bro-in-law drove us all to Scotland. Stayed at the Scottish apartment and the Queen Street…gorgeous…and extremely cheap! Although we drove there but we figured out it’s still best to pay and hop onto a tour bus…hassle free! We hopped off at some tourist attraction spots and enjoy ourselves a lot. Air is cool, views are beautiful and seems all of us love scotland too! haha…especially my dad…was adoring the architecture there!

Edinburgh Castle

Top: Around Scotland, Below: Alnwick Castle on our way back to UK…that’s where Harry Potter was filmed!

3 July

We went around the Norfolk town and just drove blindly, making turnings whenever we see any interesting roadsigns. Lucky enough we reached some herb gardens and etc.

Clockwise from top left: Apple trees, fresh herbs (spinach, dill and coriander), artichoke and i dunno what’s the name of this plant (I thought it was rhubarb at first but then it wasn’t).

Peonies and cherries

Didn’t know there are so many types of mints! These are just few of the bunch!! Lucky me!

4 July

Drove to London again to visit Madam Tussauds wax museum. Frankly speaking it wasn;t as nice as i thought. There weren’t many wax figures inside, not sure if it’s under some maintenance or what.

See see…me and Audrey Hepburn…the My Fair Lady star!!! Love her! and the rest is the salty fella…haha

5 July

We travelled to Chemsford to visit a friend. A very close friend of us I would say…We’ve known for years and here we were at a restaurant he worked for now. The eating place is nice n comfy but seems like they wanted to renovate it or something.

A picture with the main chef, Victor.

We then head home and join in the crowd for a barbeque time! Warm and comfy for a cool night!

See those happy faces…

6 July

It’s the day my parents left UK and headed back to Malaysia.

7 July

My bro-in-law dropped us off at the Stansted Airport to fly to Germany. Main purpose is to visit Nadine and the friendly neighbours, where ricky once stayed during his internship. They are really some great people! And had a real fun time partying with them. What else…a barbeque on the first night and cocktail moment on the second! Not forgetting a memorable day at the Zoo with Martin.

Soraya is so cute!

Cocktail training lesson…me and my master, Jorg.

10-13 July

The rest of the days we just hang out a lot around the nearby town, Peterborough doing quite a lot of shopping. One of the days we managed to take a train ride to London to meet up with Andrew, Ricky’s dear cousin. I was really really fun hanging out with my sister..Love her so much!

A nice lunch at Prezzo, King’s Lynn. Italian cuisine with delicious taste!

Meeting up with Andrew. Plum Valley, the place we had dinner, China Town. The roast duck is fantastic but other than that were just so-so, environment was good though.

14 July

The saddest day of the whole trip…the day wehad to make our way back to Malaysia…I really hopes we could stay a little longer..really…missed my sis n bro-in-law so very much. Love them! Love UK! miss those red juicy cherries too..but too bad..no money jor…aih~~

Thanx for reading till the end..I’l definitely long winded but that’s just half the stuff I wanted to include! For more details on the trip you may ask me personally!

Btw, here are some useful links for the trip:

http://www.skyscanner.net/

http://www.hostelbookers.com/

http://www.bbplanet.com/

http://www.parishotelmarciano.com/

http://www.scottishapartment.com/

Grad trip to UK

Finally I’m we’re back from UK. Liyen is still happy happy and didn’t really want to come back. This trip is indeed a great one and a special one, that my dad finally agreed to go on a trip oversea, (except S’pore though). Me and Ricky are both still having mild jet lags…that we couldn’t sleep at night and felt extremely sleepy in the day time. And here I am updating my blogpost at this time of the day! I’ll just follow back the usual way that I would write any vacations that I had, the dated diary basis. =)

18 June 2009

Departing from KLIA to London, Heathrow via transit in Changi, Singapore. Taking the Singapore Airlines, cheap, good service, nice food. However, flight to London wasn’t a real pleasant one as the weather wasn’t that good and had some major turbulence making nausea pills a must to take in for a weakling like me…ish~.

Mum and dad having some light ‘entertainment’ while waiting for the boarding time at Changi Airport

Arrived safely in London in late evening and got picked up by my dear sister and bro-in-law. Miss them so very much!!! The very firstplace we went was the dinner place which name I do not quite remember, but it’s certainly called “东海” in mandarin.

Scallops and Lobsters for diner…yummy yum~

Took 2 hours journey back to my sis place at King’s Lynn, Norfolk and REST!

19 June

First place of interest to visit, the Cambridge, an hour away from King’s Lynn. Great views and had fun hanging out with my family together. The weather was good and cooling. We had a boat ride strolling around the universities in Cambridge.

Breakfast at Benny and Frankie…Delicious mushroom alfredo and bolognese penne

Around Cambridge town…superb view of the streets

A boat ride and some sceneries

20 June

Sis drove us to London again and we stopped at Chinatown for breakfast (点心). Walking around the beautiful yet crowded city and had another boat ride along the Thames (river). Visited the Buckingham Palace and an evening walk at the nearby gigantic park. Since London is not that near after all, we decided to stay a night to continue our journey the next day.

Breakfast time!-Clockwise from top right: ‘Char leung’, Dumpling in chilli oil soup, ‘Lap mei’ rice, ‘char siu and yam puff with ‘char siew sou’.

Some familiar shop names and the last picture shows where we had our dinner…sis says they are one of the best shop for delicious roast meat

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Notty squirrels, London Tower Bridge, Oyster stand and Big Bend

Ginkgo tree on the left and Walnut on the right

Telephone booth? Nope…these are toilets!

21 June

Early in the morning, after a ‘guai low’ breakfast we head straight to the Bath. Such a nice and historical place to visit.  The Roman Bath is a public monument, with natural hot spring, built for the purposes of exercises, baths, socializing as well as discussing politics hundreds of years back. And it’s really amazing that they have commentary in cantonese and mandarin in their tour buses! Simply perfect for my dad n mum.

Western breakfast near Novotel Hotel

Nice scenery in Bath

Some street performance

Then we travelled in a maze for quite sometime in searh of the notable Stonehenge, which I had always thought it would be somewhere in Greece or something…silly me. Unfortunately, the car tyre was punctured we had to pull over to fix it. However, by the time we finally reached the place, it had already closed for public visitation. Sheesh…

Fixing the tyre.

A quick lunch half way at the Little Chef

Stonehenge

22 June

All of us had a real good rest from the tiring long journey last night. And today we travelled just a bit to Hunstanton for the seaside view. A pretty place to sit and enjoy the breeze!

Hunstanton Seaside

Dinner at my sis restaurant, Oriental Palace, King’s Lynn

Goosh…I’m still at 22 June? couldn’t believe it…and I’m so tired already…bet I can have a real sleep tonight and will continue tomorrow, hopefully. Cheers~

POWER LAB 2009

The very first week of the break from all the university work was spent on one of the annual major event in church, the Children’s Holiday Club. This year our theme for the CHC is: POWER LAB: where we discover Jesus miraculous power. We have all sorts of activities, songs, games and etc etc lined up for the children, age between 4 to 12, for their wonderful half day camp from Monday till Friday.

Ricky and me were fully in charged on the singspiration session, where we taught the children new songs, actions, power verse and bible point of the day and had to keep the whole thing alive! We too had to prepare some highlight programme at the end of ech day. Wow..it was really tiring but with all the help from the other helpers the CHC cannot be anymore successful, especially our Power Lab Mascot, Professor Alan! Hillrious and the kids loved him!

Well, the very first day when we initiated the CHC with the singspiration, it was very much discouraging, looking at the faint response from the children, some were too shy to sing or do actions, some were to quiet and sat aside. HOWEVER, once they were warmed up they were as lively as ever! Looking at those expressions on their face were just simply joy! Now, Photographs follows:

Top: Some very dedicated Aunties helping out during the CHC.

Bottom: Taking full focus on their artwork

Eating time!

Take time for Games, Prayers, Fellowships and Cooperation…Cool huh?

The grand finale photo sessions…Kids are adorable…at times =P

Uncle Jimmy said: “No favouritism allowed”…the older ones just dun listen!

Helpers…

Group photo of most of the helpers!

I had learnt so very much from this camp with the little ones…It was no doubt, extremely tiring but gained abundantly! and a little prayer to say:

Dear Lord,

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Amen.

First Week of “Break”

Yups..I’m supposedly having a break from all my work in Uni…finally even my hard bound reports are done. Right now I felt so much like blogging on the whole busy week i just had. But, like I said…it’s really really busy and am darn tired right now, at this moment…the weather is so warm, every confine spaces are like oven! I just wanna switched on the air-con and plunge myself on my cozy bed, hugging my teddies and have a nice sweet sleep..finally…a peaceful sleep I hope. But tomorrow I gotta get my plannings for my vacation to move on! Peps, oyasumi!

Finally…

Today my last and final semester just ended, minus that I still need to hand in my hard-bound thesis. Although I should be chilling and celebrating this moment but today is indeed a ‘happening’ day.

This morning, I had to recheck my presentation slides for my final thesis presentation numeral times and just right after I saved my presentation slides from my pc, it gave a loud “pak”  sound, the switch tripped and I can smell something sorta burning. Yups, it’s my PC! Was it a bad signal or a good wan…broke down at the very end of the semester.  Noon, I gotta present to an internal examiner and an external examiner. Well, I have to admit my job was quite a lousy one but then I thought I shouldn’t have any problem presenting as I thought it’s something I’m quite good at…=) (tak malu) …I did my part and at the end of the day, still couldn’t escape from the venomous comments! This is the worst presentation that I have ever delivered! My presentation skills weren’t that good after all..aih~Guess it’s seems like those examiners weren’t too harsh and the “comments” were sugar-coated but they still sting! Anyways, I just just be glad things are finally over now.  Back to my room and it’s certified my PC is unable to function already. aih~ another day in my lil room and couldn’t figure out what else I should do…I thought it was such a nice day to sit in, watch loads of shows, play loads of games and so on…seems like I gotta do what I do best…read some cookery books and start dreaming! hahaha…Anyways…since today life in uni is finally over i gotta say it was a big sigh of relief really.

(Using my dear Reena’s Lappie to blog, thanx Reena!)

Buttercream

My first attempt in piping buttercream roses…it wasn’t really that difficult to learn but it’s definitely not easy to master the technique in making a nice one (oopsi…sounded like “elle a dit..zzz”…tim…=P). Not too bad eh..but it’s really fun trying the new piping nozzle..*smile*

messy eh?

Testing out a new recipe for vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting. Luckily the buttercream wasn’t as sweet as I expected, so it’s, again, not too bad i guess. hahaha…*Happy*

Btw…the buttercream keep getting soft (the butter starts to melt at room temperature very quickly)…any good tips (or recipe) to improve on this? Let me know if you know of any good methods ya!

Batch Dinner? …NOT

I think I really need to make something clear this time…it’s all about the lil eat-out thingy we had…

1. It’s not exactly a batch gathering, just made it sounds interesting..it’s just a simple eat-out-together. So don’t misunderstand. Btw whoever that actually named the gathering as “batch dinner” pls rename it to something else.

2. I am NOT the organizer, just a planner to see how many people are actually interested in the dinner thingy, I don’t get to decide who could go and who couldn’t. If you want to plan something that involve EVERYONE, pls go ahead!

3.  I am not RACIST…my non-Chinese friends I still love u people a lot! Pls do understand the situation here.

Didn’t expect there were so many issues on this little outing. Anyhow, I just hope you people did enjoy that night, I did anyways. So thanx all!

Mummy I Love You!

It has been such a long time since I last updated my bloggie eh…The study week had just gone and the exams weeks are finally here. Well this semester is indeed a leisure period, minus the fyp which progress leads to nowhere, I am only to sit for TWO papers! Are you getting very jealous now? =P but due to this very special day, I had to pen “blog” a few words. MOTHER’S DAY…Although we celebrated on Saturday~ but then spending time with my family, be it short or long, means heaps of treasure to me!

Specially to my Mum, who we call “mah” most of the times, is the greatest! Although her temper’s short and may act like a kid at some point, her goodness is still immeasurable! It’s just too good to have a mum who cooks good food (top priority =P), caring, loving and a good listening ear.

Saturday night we had dinner at Kim Bali a place which serves a wide variety of Asian Food. Food served were not bad at all! And we were smart enough to make booking for the dinner to avoid undesirable long queues and hassles.

(Top) A waiter or rather a good assistant to serve the first Miang Kam wrap to my mum while (below) we, too, enjoying the Thai Salad.

(Top) Miang Kam, a Thai salad a combination of chopped ginger, shallots, lime peel, dried shrimps, peanuts and roasted dessicated coconut wrapped in kadok leave (Lao yip in chinese) topped with a sweet and sour sauce. (Below) my favourite dish: Jawa style lemon grass chicken..mmm….tasty!

Clockwise for top left: Prawns in Butter sauce and sweet and spicy sauce, pucuk paku (wild ferns) in coconut milk (something like that), stir-fry mixed vege and salted fish pork pot. oh..I missed that Assam fish..darn nice too!

Our beloved mummy and daddy!

Group Photo!

Apart from the food, Mum get a nicely wrapped carnation and a special recipe compilation written by the chef of Kim Bali. Wah, indeed a long ads we have here! We had a real great time dining together…

Last but not least,

Mah …. **MUACKS**

M’sia…desert?

Seems like Malaysia’s turning into a Sahara Desert…Just what is wrong with the weather! Even Cameron Highland is not as cold as it used to be. And at this perfect moment the air-conditioner in the living room refuse to function at all! Wondering if this will be permanent..or at least not the air-con!