Spring Festival

Our church has organised a spring festival to provide an alternative for Halloween on 31 Oct.

It was like a mini fun fair. You can go to different booths, and get tickets and exchange toys with the tickets collected from the booth. There's hop scotch, fishing booth, bubbles booth, etc..

N at the 'crawl' scotch booth.
Photo booth..





Fishing booth

Face painting..

There's even a petting zoo!!!! the little girls were all super excited about riding the pony and playing with the rabbits and mices.

N taking photos with Ms Amy, who usually looks after him during sunday service at the creche. N here is apprehensive because he can't quite recognised Ms Amy who has now grown extra plaits..

N with wilma..

"Man of steel" attempting to bowl...

Checking out mommy's diaper bag

N checking out the bouncy castle..

The aMAZEing race...

It was a very enjoyable experience. Not only did the festival cater for our own congregation, we get a fair amount of visitors coming to the spring festival..

HOS spring show 08

this year the HOS spring show fell on the same day as the ladies retreat. I divided my time between the two events as I have volunteered to be a certificate writer at the spring show.



I didn't take many photos this year not because the show wasn't pretty. I found that when I have too many photos, i ended up not posting them at all.


So this year, these are my favourites from the show:

This year's club display shows orchids by a 'stream'. it's amazing how the committee comes up with all the ideas to put on a display. they usually meet up at the president's house over lunch and then discuss what sort of materials, and the 'theme' they want to set up.

I like cattelya. they have big flowers and they also have a nice scent. Unfortunately I haven't got one in my collection.
This is a cross between zygopetalum (see below) and something else.

A zygopetalum. see the resemblance in the last photo?

Another view of the club display..
Laelia..even the name is pretty!
This grassy speciment actually belongs to the orchid family too. I think it is called dendrochillum.
Floral arrangement category.
Another type of dendrochillum. This one has slightly bigger flowers ..the scent of the flowers are just amazing.
The grand champion of the show. It bagged several trophies.
The grand champion in close-up!! perfect composition, , size etc!!!!

ladies retreat

i had the opportunity to attend the ladies retreat at my church this year. Here in the photo is our guest speaker. she not only speaks but she also sings. her name is Aliki Flodine. She said it's very easy to remember her name just remember 'a leaky' tap.

anyhow, i enjoyed tremendously listening to her .she was down to earth and captivating. and she spoke in a very aussie accent (like Kath and Kim) and she also looks like The Nanny from some angle.

check out http://www.aliki.com.au

Drawers

Here's N opening and closing the drawer. he'd just found out the cause and effect of his action. he was mesmerized.

London

I am completely behind my schedule with updating my travelogue. before i procrastinate any further, ..

The view of the London eye..the queue was so long, we thought we would do it another day, but we never got around to do it..

human statue..

A wizard
Me with Big Ben and Palace of Westminster aka Parliament House.

Can you see Superman and Lara Croft?

Leon and Big Ben.
Another shot of Big Ben. Silly me used to think Big Ben is the red double decker.

Parliament House and Thames River

Mind the Gap, the famous London Tube.

When we were there, the Londoners were having their Mayoral Election. Some of the campaign banners of the candidate. Unfortunately 'Ken' (Ken Livingstone) lost to Boris Johnson.

Anyways, it was a lovely day..fine but still chilly..we also went to meet Karen (see previous post) and then from Karen's location, we bus to Trafalgar Sq. and walked past Pall Mall. (I can't believe I was walking on the landmarks from Monopoly Original version) Next stop, we went to Chinatown.

i am a bit of a serial 'chinatown' visitor. I always want to take picture with the 'gate' of the Chinatown.
The 'avenue' is lined with restaurants and asian grocers.

Typical souvenir shops in UK. They are dominated by the Indian communities.

A statue in front of a theatre.

Trafalgar Square area,National Art Gallery etc..

Lunch with Karen

We meet up with Karen for lunch. If you don't already know, the Brits have claimed (would not apply to all Brits, of course) chicken tikka masala as their national dish. Karen wanted to share with us where she normally has hers...so we headed to Hot Chilli

We ordered our lassi..
Jake busy checking out the reviews of the shop.

Me and karen posing..

That's our feed for the afternoon. The 'orangy' dish was the chicken tikka. The one next to it was lamb dish and we ordered a mushroom rice and another chicken dish. Upon's karen's recommendation, we also ordered this huge roti.. Just to give you a rough idea how huge the roti was, I asked jake to have his hand on the roti

Eileen, you should definitely check this place up. I know karen's invited you for the umpteenth time. *LOL

Swag Restaurant before musical

The girls before our food arrives.

Entree - the satay skewer..

We went to watch musical with Eileen & Fai and Karen and their friend, PL. They managed to find a dinner and show deal and it was held at Holborn area. Some of the menu for the night was fish and chips (smartly wrapped in newspaper), satay skewer, burgers, and chicken breast ..

Me and my burger..
The girls after the food arrived..

Featuring the fish and chips..This F&C is much better than the ones I had in Wales.

Jake's main - healthy chicken
Our dessert

Us posing in front of the theatre before we get ushered in..

As you might already read in karen's review, I fell asleep while watching the musical. It is not to say the musical's boring but the environment is really condusive to take 'short naps'. And I was really impressed with the makeups, set up and of course the performance.