me at 34 weeks +1 day

here goes, another bump pic of me. I was 34 weeks and 1 day pregnant when pic was taken.

praise the lord, my rashes has improved heaps.

We went to visit the hospital on Saturday. Found out where to park and where the delivery suites are. A hospital midwife kindly showed us one of the empty suite.

chinatown in bangkok

this is the last 2 episode of my travelogue to bangkok (I Promise)

they said chinese are the jews of the east. they usually migrate to foreign land as trader..their presence can be seen in the chinatown.

we took a cab to go to chinatown in bangkok. it was known as yaowarat street there.
basically as our cab past through the road, we see lots of goldsmith.lots of restaurant too..
taxi driver dropped us at sampaeng lane. it's this narrow alley with heaps of small shops.mostly wholesalers. how do I know this? i saw many shoe shops and I went in trying and wanting to buy and the sales assistant said I have to buy at least 6 pairs of the same shoes. as I walked past more shops, some of them display signs "WHOLE SALE ONLY".

anyways i soon got tired of the street. it's just too crowded and selling all sorts of knick knacks.
we must have asked at least 20stores if they sell 'bell'. (I shall save the bell story for next time)

we stopped by this coconut and sugar cane stall on sampaeng lane. me and jake must have drank at least 4 big cups of sugar cane and 2 coconuts each. it was the most cooling thing on the hottest day.



for lunch, we had dim sum at sheraton (not related to the hotel chain) all these are their version of 'har kao' crafted into different shapes. first is the fish, then the swan, can't remember what the 3rd one is..then the rabbit.


some other type of dim sum. i think it's another type of prawn dumpling. the gravy one is some 'crab leg' ones.


then we went to another restaurant to try bird nest soup. yaowarat road is a long road. it's a one way street with 4 lanes. we went walk about and went to try shark fin's soup.
saw lots of bric-a-brac and chinese drug store type shop and we bought dried mushrooms etc ..
as it is a one way street, no taxi was willing to pick us up on yaowarat back to our hotel without charging us some ridiculous fare (not wanting to use meter) so we had to walk against the traffic and slowly walk to the hualamphong which is the train station. Before we reached hualamphong, we past this 'chinatown' gate thingie. so a pic had to be taken.


btw, thais are really into their PEPSI. notice the 'measly' coca cola billboard on the building. You can hardly see it amongst all the Pepsi, Seven-up, mirinda billboard.

i was red as a lobster when we got back to the hotel and was 2 shades darker the next day ..

rash

after a walk around the reserve one evening, i started to itch ..then i seem to develop small bumps on my arms, legs etc ..went to see my GP and all she said was, "this is pregnancy hormones related'. GREAT. she gave me the mildest steriod cream which i used less than 6 times (given the side effects), pinetar solutions to bath with (this is good but smells like hospital) and anti-histamines (which I did not touch)

my condition has since improved although the rash is still there..apparently it will not go away until after baby's born.

iron rich

one night, jake made me this scrumptious meal to satisfy my craving. It was sirloin steak with mushroom and pine nut with kumara chips (hence the dark colour) with beans. beans was a let down because it's from those packet Watties frozen beans. nevertheless, his effort paid off..i was very satisfied after that.

incident

had a little incident today at work. we had a meeting to go through the preliminary result. after meeting finishes, i went back to my office.

my pants feel a bit wet. ODD! *ALARMed..

i went to the loo and check...GEEZ, what's wrong..did my water break!?~?~?~?

i went back to meeting area to check the chair. there was a wet belt on the chair and I had sat on it during the meeting..~PHEW

cravings

my number 1 craving for the last 28 weeks has been 'NOODLE'.
it can take the form of laksa, mee mamak, pho,hongkong cafe noodles ...
so long as it has to be some type of noodle.

on a day when I was taking study leave to study at home, this is what I whip up with whatever I can find in my kitchen pantry and fridge..

my own version of Bee Hoon Soup accompanied with small bowl of curry chicken.



Ingredients:
Mushroom
Fishballs
Cabbage
Egg
Bee Hoon

cocoa butter!

time has been moving real fast. apologise for the temporary hiatus.

i can't come up with a suitable title for this post. cc suggested a few ideas, i have settled with what you are seeing.

in the past month, i have turned one year older and wiser I hope.
had a small shared dinner with my lifegroup. cakes etc..
but this birthday will be different from the rest of my birthdays.
me and jake will become parents in 13 more weeks. below's a peep of me and my bump.

pic taken at week 23


shared dinner - we had cakes, indonesian gado-gado, filipino rice and stir fry veggies, beef rendang and what's a birthday dinner without long life noodle. we cooked a pot of 'bek ting yueh' to go with the long life noodle.

Bukit bintang/Jln Alor food galore

you can't be far away from food in the Bukit Bintang area and Jalan Alor.
late at night we took a stroll from our hotel to the hawker stall strip @ jalan alor. it's full of life.
tried the satay and it was nice. btw, the prices are not standardized..




went to the above stall for the penang char kuay tiaw. it was YUMMMM..we walked around looking for frog claypot dish too..finally found it at the store below..(it's located somewhere in the midle part of jln alor)




we also tried out the herbal tea from Gong Ho. It was a big no-no to try the dimsum at the HKstyle cafe. Felt cheated.

Petronas Twin Tower

i had been to this place a few times. first time, karen brought me there, we were in KLCC mostly, sitting by the bench watching shoppers buy things, particularly the rich shoppers from Middle East.

the year before, jake and I went there but the twin tower is not open to public. (the 42nd floor)

this year, jake again wanted to go. We had watched a documentary in Bangkok about the construction of the towers and i guess that sort of make me slightly more interested.


i had to take a pic of a notice in the KL Philarmonic Hall as it says LANG LANG will not be performing the symphony orchestra. *wink. Only knew Lang can sing and didn't know she's involved in the orchestra.

the others are just pics of 'things' around/in the towers. the 42nd floor skywalk is pic no 3 (2nd row) only the lower level skywalk is open to the public. we took some aerial shots of the 'golden triangle'.

More of KL

we had time in our hand before our scheduled time to go on the 42nd floor of the Petronas twin tower. we decided to go to pasar seni/central market. this market used to be a wet market long time ago but have since been tastefully converted to be a cultural handicraft centre.

the market is divided into specific wings to show crafts from specific races.
on the upper level, there is also a foodcourt that sells 'malaysian' food.




jake washing his hands on the wok basin. the nasi kerabu(blue)/dagang(yellow) and dishes he bought from rasa kelantan.it was rather nice but i was skeptical about the blue coloured rice. i went to the melaka stall to try the sizzling noodle and it was a letdown. i find the noodle not tasty.there was too much soy sauce in it.

after finshing the dishes, we walked around and I stopped for a while to listen to the guy playing the 'angklung'. we also stopped at Old town to try the popular roti and the hot milk tea..

note the tiling on each wing is different to represent the specific races.

Astro Concert

we got back from melaka and decided to wander around searching for food. we were staying at bukit bintang area and we just wandered into throngs of people and heard ppl singing.
jake saw pics of singer and is super adamant that 'guang liang' will be in the concert!

so we stayed for the whole night waiting for guang liang to appear. the concert was organised by ASTRO to commemorate the 50th year of Msian's Independence. SO watch out in Astro channel for this program.

i don't know many of the singers but they are mostly in the malaysian chinese top40 selection. they are mostly locals who has gone to taiwan to develop their career. Out of the numerous singers, i knew Fish leung, Penny tai??(tai pei yi) and of coz Guang Liang and Ping Guan.

anyhow, guang liang was the last person to come out. So i was tip toeing for a good 2 hours!
we later saw them (the whole bunch of singers) going into Hotel ROyal Bintang. They were escorted by 'body guards' in the form of those emergency troop.

teenagers were hysterical..I overheard this .."EDDIE is so cuteeeee...He's so handsome'....
i didn't even know who he is.

CLose up, fish is very tiny...probably 5 ft tall but wearing very high heels and wearing very thick makeups :) but i do like her song.


Me, after the concert. Towards the end of the concert, the whole group sang 'SETIA'.
anyone still remember the song? Excuse my camera, our lens is practically non-existent.

Day trip to Melaka

continuing with my never ending travelogue, after CNY and all the glorious wedding parties, we traveled to KL before going back to Bangkok and Nz.

We decided to make a side trip to Melaka. jake has never been to Melaka and I was last there when I was 11.

we took an express bus from Puduraya Station to Melaka one early morning. The bus ticket was RM9.40each way for a 2 hour journey.

We reached Melaka Sentral at about 10 30am and caught a taxi to the 'central' of Melaka. I call it Central because that's where all the attractions are.


we decided to go to the malacca sultanate palace. the building has a minangkabau influence and it's made of wood. it was just the right thing to do on a hot scorching day to be inside the 'palace'.. i went through the palace (it was really a house with lots of mannequins in various costumes) reading about the different type of baju melayu etc. there were also pictures, models of various castles in malaysia and model of how malay royal bedroom is like ..

the story of hang tuah and hang jebat and also tun perak were outlined. was suddenly transported back to ol' school days. i remember completing an assignment on tun perak although i can't remember much about tun perak anymore.

then we came out of the 'palace' and walked to the A Famosa (Porta De Santiago). It's jammed pack with tourists and everyone couldn't stop snapping pictures. We walked uphill and saw remnants of church with lots of tombstones.

we then went to the stadhuys area and took picture of the red christ church. i am impressed with the landscaping of the gardens.

having read in kennysia.com re chicken rice ball, and jonker street, we decided to walk there.
it wasn't hard to find the chicken rice ball shop..there was a huge queue when we arrive outside the shop. the shop looks like a very old chinese house with open courtyards. we ordered the rice balls and hainan chicken and veggie for lunch. there was even a dutch windmill near the gardens and finally jake took a pic with an iguana.

we then walked to the new dataran pahlawan mall as the sweltering sun is making us sweat like crazy.


before too soon, it was time for afternoon tea. we found this food court across dataran pahlawan.


we tried out several hawker favourites. when we were finished, we walked to mahkota parade. it is less upmarket like dataran pahlawan but has its own attraction. we bought nyonya curry powder and spotted these cool decors using egg cartons in some boutique (Pic below)



we took another taxi and asked the pak driver to bring us to a nyonya restaurant but none of them was open when he brought us there. I guess we were too early *(they all open around dinner time)...we decided to head back to Melaka Sentral and catch another express back to KL.

Self crusting Broccoli and Pine Nut Tart

i told everyone I made a quiche but I just realised the recipe is actually called TART ..nevertheless, this dish is pretty easy to make and it made the whole house smells real nice. I baked these for a morning tea at work.


Butter to grease dish
1 head broccoli (I think I must have used 1½ head)
3 spring onions, sliced (I used 6 spring onions)
1 cup grated tasty chese (or any hard cheese)
4 eggs
1 cup milk
½ cup self raising flour (I used high grade flour with ½ tsp of baking powder)
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 tbsp chopped fresh oregano (I used dried ones)
½ cup pine nuts (I omit this)

First heat oven to 200c. Grease a ceramic quiche dish with butter. Cut the broccoli into bite-sized florets and cook in boiling, salted water for 3 minutes. Drain well and scatter broccoli over the base of the dish.

Scatter over spring onion and grated cheese. Beat eggs in a bowl, add milk and flour, then whisk to combine. Season with salt and pepper and stir in oregano.

Pour this mixture over the broccoli and scatter with pine nuts. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown and set. Serve warm, cut in wedges.


Recipe by Julie le Clerc from NZ Woman's Weekly

orchids shot during CNY

these lovely orchid belonged to my uncle who's a really good grower.
if he sees my collection, he would flip :P i usually visit him whenever I go back to Sibu and he would definitely let me tour around his shadehouse and tells me about the orchid but i can't remember all their names now.


i took heaps of pic but some didn't turn out well and these are my favourite shots.

the first pic from the left is an albino borneo orchid. it's a type of phalaenopsis aka moth orchid.
in a normal borneo orchid, it has a pink lip..i took the 2nd pic as i have never seen an orchid plant with variegated leaves..third pic is another type of phalaenopsis usually the taiwanese hybrid.

i forgot the name of the orchid in the 1st plant in 2nd row but I like the shape and colour of the flowers. next one is a cymbidium...cymbidium is usually cool growing, but apparently these one is warm growing and comes from China. the third one is probably a type of dendrobium,
again i like the plant and shape of flowers ..

on the third row, the orchid looks like a type of palm tree. apparently this species is from panama. i took the pic of the last two pics for its intense colour.

meeting the extended Teo family

when I went back for CNY this year, I met 2 new members of the Teo family.

One was taking 3 days to get used to me. She sniffed me a lot and barked me when she first saw me. Okay, she was my brother's dog Macy. M's technically my dad's dog since my bro only see her in the weekend. She's a spoiled thing. She used to live in a kernel my dad and bro built but now she reigns over the whole compound! she can be found on the verandah of the house most of the time.


on Day 2, M destroyed my beloved slipper overnight!!! GRRR much to Jake's amusement. i left it on the shelf but she must have sensed the new 'toy' on the shelf.




jake spotted her chewing on mom's dendrobium and took this pic from a distance as evidence. she looked rather sheepish here. such is a life of a spoiled pet.



then there's a puppy. his name is Beggy. Beggy is black and is big for a puppy. dad got it from a fren. i was very scared of him for the first couple of days due to his size. he lives in a kernel and I do feel a bit sorry for him as he only gets to roam around at his 'business' time. he has a huge appetite and he will eat whatever that macy doesn't want on top of his own food. ie bread crust and M only eats the soft part of the bread. he always finish his dinner in record time while it takes forever for M to finish eating.

in the midst of the two canine, mom also told me about our residence reptile. it's our pet tortoise. i haven't seen it in 2 years and it's grown up by quite a lot. he used to have a mate and they used to live in an aquarium but recently my parents decided to let it go free range and the tortoise lived in the backyard. i seriously have no idea where it lives, i suspected it was underneath the pile of wooden planks ..i see it out and about at meal-time though.

here i fed him with a spoonful of rice ..his diet is mainly rice and raw veggies. this is a shy dude. if you scrutinise hard enough, you might see his head.


he's probably half to two third the size of my foot.

while tortoise is somewhere having his meal, M is having fun sniffing the backyard much to Beggy's dismay. He's barking ( he's protesting and telling M that he should be the one sniffing and playing outside)

Do Re Mi...

over the weekend, we had our usual choir practice. some choir members expressed their preference to learn their tunes by solfege. the syllables actually helped them remember the tunes better. The thing with some of the hymns we sing is that it also has sharp and flat keys.
I know that in # notes, the trick is to make it 'ee' ..for eg, Do is Di and Re is Ri and Fa is Fi but what about flat keys ..we get the odd flat notes..

That prompted me to google 'solfege' and I found this helpful chart from the American Choral Director's Association.

I will be conveying this to the choir member in our next practice ;) EHHEHE.

birds of the tree

my workplace has several big tress. of late, i notice a few of them (same species) are bombarded by flocks of birds. they were extremely noisy in the morning and late in the evening.
and they have pooed so much that the poor trees are covered in white.

anyways, not only do they made a lot of noise, the poo they produce is extremely smelly.
they reminded me of.......Sibu in the evening when the birds are hovering above the skies and the white spots on the road.

sawadee - part 6

still on my travel log :P i am determined to finish blogging about it given that i was so slack with my US trip.
we were on day 4 of our bangkok trip. it was early in the morning and we went out to find our breakfast. was walking along Silom road and noticed most of the big building will have their own shrines at the front. (see pic above) i was very intrigued to see there is even miniature people and animal placed on the shrines.

the two pics of the road and sign is of coz shot by jake. being a traffic engineer, he observes all sort of things to do with traffic. he is adamant that that was a sign to let the public know of the condition of important roads in the area. Ie green means free flow, orange means slight congestion and red is probably a traffic jam. but for a non-traffic engineer, all i saw was the moving bilboard on the sign, the guy who 's doing a kungfu pose and pays absolutely no attention to the traffic sign on the same sign.

we found this market in one of the alleyway. it has stalls selling clothings, batteries bla...
but most of it is like a big canteen. we had a couple of things since the servings in thailand is very small and we justified that we can pig out on all the food":P i tried the wonton noodles, while jake tried the 'zak fan'. i especially liked how they cook long beans with the pork belly with lemon grass. hm...that's innovative cooking. i never considered flavouring long bean with lemon grass. then i spotted the pad thai guy. he cooks on a big flat 'pan' thingie. i ordered one pad thai and one hodthoi (the oyster pancake thingie) we 'ta pau-ed' the two items and continue exploring silom area.


back in the hotel, we showered and have our tap-pau-ed lunch since we need to check out and head to the airport. i had pad thai with prawns while jake had the hot thoi.


most of the pics here were taken by jake since you see that it's all to do with traffic gantry sign and so on. i was falling asleep in the cab . we reached the airport after about an hour in the cab. while i looked after our luggage, jake was everywhere, and he took heaps of pic of the airport.
i was particularly impressed with the landscaping of the airport. very majestic and had good use of colour. not only that it was meticulously kept..the two standing square things were air conditioning (3rd row, 2nd from left) i was particularly interested at the statutes which depict the story of buddha and some heavenly and demonic creatures. (last row ,1st pic from the left). then it was the pic of the King and his guests at his 80th birthday and where they are seated. i was particularly interested to see all the monarchs around the world.finally we reach our gate on the way to KL.
At about 8 30pm Thai time, we said goodbye to bangkok..

LOST and FOUND

couple of days back, i rang home and spoke with my mom.
and she broke the news to me...my fav undies that went missing has been FOUND!!!
i never packed it in my bag on my way back... :D

Sawadee-part 5

following thewet, we decided to go to khao san, the backpacker haven in Bangkok.
anyways we were stopped by this 'helpful' tuk tuk driver (who said he is a teacher at nearby sch) that told us to go to some wat and then to a govt handicraft fair ..he even recommended a tuk tuk for us.
anyways we knew it is the bloody gem scam when we arrived at the wat.
it was a tiny wat in a school. but since we were on the ride, we got the guy to take us to Vinnamek palace as I wanted to take a pic of the palace.



after that, he dropped us near a plaza frequented by Thais. it's like a wholesaler place ..
our tuk tuk ride costs 20Bht and took us 1-2 hrs. anyways after that, we decided to walk to democracy monument.

it took us almost 1 hr to get there. at some point, I told jake that we are on the wrong direction because there's not a single signage that shows the monument...he said to stick with where we are going because whatever direction that i said is correct is usually the total opposite :P hate to said he was right. we got to democracy monument which is a huge monument in the middle of a round abouts. interesting thing to note about this roundabout, it has a traffic light on the round about. HOW RARE.

some interesting things (ie light stand, interesting sculpture we came along on this governmental 'avenue'. i call it governmental as it has all the government buildings there.
finally the democracy monument. check out when it's free of traffic and when it's with traffic.


we then walked to khao san...and I went to used the most expensive toilet in bangkok at this hotel...it is a user-pay toilet ...actually it's only 5bht but considering you get to ride on tuk tuk for 20bht and MBK mall charge 1-2bht for toilet, 5bht is a rip off.

khao san road. it's the mecca for all backpackers.

we decided to go to the KING's PALACE since it was close by according to the map...we walked for what seems like forever (20minutes) and finally reach the palace but we found out the palace is closing in 5minutes.
so i decided that i wanted to go to the pak klong talat since it's open 24 hrs a day.

luckily we could take the boat to pak klong talat ..anyways the majority part of pak klong talat is a vegatable market. we walked and jake kept prompting me and asked me where are the flowers as all we see were veggies and more veggies :P finally we did come to the flower section and there were really lots and lots of flower. there were rows of flower shops...
bridal bouquet are for sale as if people were selling kueh..but mostly is flowers that people use for worship at the temple ..pak klong talat is also the place where hotels, restaurant source their flowers from.

baby roses sold in big bunches. i didn't ask for the price but i think they are less than 100bht.


this dendrobium orchid intrigues me. i have never seen blue dendrobium before. on closer inspection, i was disappointed to find that the blue was spray painted, and so is the rest of the pink and orange dendrobiums.


what you are seeing are not veggies. we are used to seeing bunches of kangkong wrapped up by the veggie seller in the pasar. here, it's actually stems of baby roses all bunched up and thrown to the lorry to be delivered somewhere.