Wednesday, June 25, 2008

out and about in Sentul

One Fine Day (this morning) in Sentul!

I've never ventured into Sentul! And it's only a 5 min drive from home! Less without traffic. I went this morning to collect a package at the Sentul Post Office. We saw some interesting sights.

Public phones in Sentul. I haven't seen anything like them anywhere else in KL. Maybe I don't get out much, I don't know.
Inside the post office, pleasantly uncrowded, unlike the one in TTDI!
Now you can personalize stamps for special ocassions - newborn baby, birthday, graduation, wedding, mother's day and anniversaries! Pretty cool I thought.
Sara wanted a bun from this tuck shop down the block from the post office. The shopkeeper kindly allowed me to take his picture! But his wife didn't want to be in it.
You can't see it on here, but there were two disposable diapers drying on that jemuran. Recycling disposable diapers. Yay, Malaysians boleh!
Yes, it smells as unpleasant as it looks or as intriguing as it looks... as you like. The guy was spraying that thingamijig silver. He wanted to pose but I said no, I wanted to capture him in action :)

Someone had put their clothes out to dry while we were away at the post office. Parking here was wherever you see a big enough spot for your car. No parking meters to feed coins.

Sara read this sign and asked me what building it was. I said what do you think. She said, Is it a lady police's office? Directly translated Ibu is mother, Pejabat is office and Polis is police. I can only imagine what she thought of those words!! I told her it's like saying it's the mother office, only the word in English is headquarters.

I got this book this afternoon. I have to finish it before the weekend is over. No problem. It looks like an interesting read.
Salad before dinner - rambutan slivers (yay!!!), lettuce, green apple slices, walnut and lots of sunflower seeds, and my own olive oil, calamansi juice, salt and pepper dressing.. yummy

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

lost in hulu langat

Last Sunday, we went out to Hulu Langat to look for a waterfall that we'd been to earlier on Mother's Day (which happened to coincide with my birthday this year).

We weren't sure about the name and weren't even sure how to get to Hulu Langat! We relied on road signs. Surprisingly there were none!

Finally, we got directions from a mother and son everything banana snack business on an empty carpark lot off the highway (...in the excitement of getting lost, I forgot to take pictures).

We asked a few more people after them. The son didn't seem like he knew his way very well. It felt like too long a way (from what we could recall from the last trip). But everyone gave the same directions, so we stuck with the directions.

Drove uphill, downhill, passed some spooky looking cemeteries, topekong (should have taken pictures! but I guess when you're spooked you just forget!), a lonely road (and it was getting dark)...

Anyway... to make a long story short, we didn't find the waterfall, but we did find this very pretty (man-made, I think) lake!

As it was getting quite late, we only stopped a few minutes for pictures. We plan to go back the first weekend in July!!! We passed an orang Asli settlement, and I saw that they had a little by the road shop which I want to have a better look at.

Oh when we come back here, we'll be looking for Sg Gabai waterfalls.




I had my sweat pants and shoes in the car.

rambutans in ttdi

Took a 3 hour lunch today (to run work related errands... of course..) Sara and I saw these georgeous red rambutans sold on the walkway, outside a supermarket. Of course we wanted some immediately. But as we couldnt possibly eat so much rambutans between the two of us, we decided to get only handful of loose ones. That's the guy pouring our rambutans into the pink plastic bag (sorry no environmentally friendly bag here :( ).

Mmmmm... guess who'll be having sweet rambutan pieces in her salads for the next few days! More fruits down the block. I wanted to buy some of those bananas, pineapples, and mangoes! Luckily there was a sensible person between the two of us!

I just had to snap these beautiful roses at Sara's babysitter's now hadn't I??

eating out in Sri Hartamas

Went for dinner at Sould Out w Trevor and Jensen last Saturday. It was very nice, apart from being a bit too loud; we sat under one of the speakers! We mentioned this to our usher, thinking we could get another table. The nice man misunderstood, he went to the DJ and got him to lower the volume of the guilty speaker instead! It was a slight improvement nonetheless.
That's the soup of the day - I forget it was either mushroom something or chicken something!
Satay appetizer! Delicious. I only had two sticks though - so much food!
Mine was Chicken Vindaloo - didn't realise it was hot! I thought the red was tomato!
Jensen's Lamb Shank - we shared our food as mine was too hot to eat all by myself. Trevor ate most of my chicken! So kasian oh you darlingest! Sorry!
I had most of Trevor's Sweet Sour Fish!
That's Jensen in the reflection taking our picture!

sally happy wishes!

Birthday wishes from Sally Happy, Trevor and Jensen!

Saturday, June 21, 2008

my pink baby

Sara's middle name is Pink.

This was a few months ago at The Curve. She's showing off her new pink Polly Pocket book, standing in a frightfully pink sales booth. Pink carpet.

And pink dragonflies floating above.

A more recent picture - last month at home. She was in the mood for pictures - of me taking her pictures as well as her taking pictures of her stuff.
Only 2 out of her some 20 or so (at last count) barbie collection. She has more at her dad's place.
Sara was in charge of this and the barbie picture. She arranged the dolls, book, jewelry box, colour pencil and angle for the picture! She was so cute being busy creative director!

Monday, June 16, 2008

my favouritest trevor pictures

June 2nd 2008 at Ryan's early birthday party and Heather's full moon. Also Trevor's er.. 18th birthday. (and late dad's 75th)


Trevor's pictures came out so well. (well imho anyway - I took the pictures after all) This is him in the various stages of opening my present to him (Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet.. yay!)



careful with the wrapping... we want to recycle it


almost there and wrapping still intact... can use for my birthday present next year





ahh.. so glad you love it cousin dearest!! muaah

orchids orchids orchids

Sneaked (hmm.. or is it snuck?? anyway...) away for a longer lunch than usual some 2 3 weeks ago to look at orchids 20 minutes away from work at the edge of KL!!
I should qualify that I dont normally do this (sneaking away stuff) but it was a welcome change to staring at two white (plaster) walls and a glass one 8 hours of the day.. (oh, and I forget... the computer screen)

For those not in the know(poor you), the park is on this little hill opposite the bird park (at the edge of KL). That's the path leading up to the top of the hill... not quite as strenuous as going up Mt Kinabalu!! Hardly broke a sweat, and bonus! It was a pleasant afternoon... not too hot, a breeze that came and went and a little drizzle that daren't turn into a terrific thunderstorm while I was out there.
I can't remember if my mom had an orchid like this, but it reminded me of her anyway.
I think she had some like these.
I know she had these!!! I remember asking her for some from her garden to bring to class so I could be teacher's pet (thats me learning how to suck up at a young age, oh yes, gaining teacher points was big at the time)
I dont think mom had these.
I know she had these or something that looked very very similiar to these!

Pitcher plants!! Only we called them Monkey Cup... I only started calling them pitcher plants after I learnt to read. We used to live next to this rambling secondary tropical forest and there were many many pitcher plants growing there. I remember looking into the cavities to watch ants trapped inside trying frantically to escape those unforgiving walls (not too dissimiliar from an action-packed scene from a b-movie minus the sound effects)

More orchids on the way back to the car.
Can you see the red dragonfly just right of center? I have to learn about composition and focus and lighting and ...

Hmm.. I should do this more often!


Thursday, June 5, 2008

ugh! no more let's go for a drive...

I hadn't expected gas price in Malaysia to increase.. I don't know.. I would've thought that being a net exporter of oil, higher oil prices meant more money! Hmm.. must be some other thing that I'm missing... should have paid more attention in economics classes!! Or maybe political science!

A friend sent me this link .. might this shed some light? http://humblevoice.blogspot.com/2008/06/56-billion-ringgit-question.html

Monday, June 2, 2008

what people are eating around the globe

I sent an email to a few friends and one of them, Luis, put the images up on his website... which, I thought, was a cool thing to do!

This is the link to his page. A point to note though.. Hope your Spanish is up to scratch.

http://www.luisbeltran.com/archivos/2008/06/dime-cuanto-gastas-en-comida-y-te-dire-de-donde-eres/