excited & nostalgic

finally all the excitement is about to burst! i am going home for a month for several mega events!!!muahahaha.

this time i am flying via bangkok. stopping for 4 days. any ideas for sights and shopping?


okay better go pack now..the pic above makes me nostalgic!

fishing trip

the boys in my house have been busy going on their 'hunters' and 'gatherers' trip. they actually had to pay to hunt and gather.
nevertheless, they felt it was worth every cent of it.

they caught all sort of fish- red cod, snappers, little sharks, yellow tail (ikan kembung)
we have been eating sashimi, fish curry, assam fish, sweet and sour fish, and finally home made fish balls.

they left the boat at dawn and go to nearby island to fish. they seem to not mind the fishy smell and the sunburn they come home with..

i think the painful thing of the trip is all the gut cleaning they need to do ..fortunately, i only took part at the 'eating' part. *grin

Korean Jap Chae

This is an easy to cook dish.

Ingredients needed:
Korean cellophane noodle
Sesame oil
Sesame seed
Carrot
Spanish Onion
Capsicum ( I use yellow and green)
Spinach
Korean Soy Sauce
Pepper, Sugar to taste

First, boil the cellophane noodle until the noodles turn transparent.
Drain and coat with sesame oil.

Julienne the carrot, capsicum ( into match stick).
Cut the onions into thin wedges.

Heat up the wok with sesame oil and saute the onion wedges and veggies.
Add in the boiled noodle and stir.
Mix in the korean soy sauce, pepper and sugar to taste.
Spinach is cooked separately with sesame oil as garnish.
Toast the sesame seed before garnishing.

p/s: This is a vegetarian version. Usually in the Korean restaurant, Jap chae is cooked with beef and garnished with eggs. As usual, I took the liberty to modify the recipe to my liking. 

what's blooming now..

here's the bloomer this month.


This is allysum also known as sweet alice. The colour for the above is called Rose.
I bought them in November as seedling punnet and planted them into the garden bed.
Two months later, it's blooming. Allysum is a type of perennial and they are normally mass planted on garden bed as borders.

I have killed an anthurium before. This time I tried to make sure this one survive. I got them sometime in August and it wasn't doing very well in September. Even as I was being careful, the plant looked very limp/droopy.Then an orchid member told me, anthurium loves warmth and loves a good soak in the water. I went home and immediately immerse the whole pot in a bucket of water. When the bubble stops bubbling on top of the potting mix, I brought it back into my living room. The next day, the whole plant perks up.
In December, I saw a bud. (You have to look real hard on the left hand side pic). In January, the flower bloomed. It's a pink anthurium. In Summer, I have to water it 3 times a week.

back in action

Happy New Year !!!

2006 ended pretty swiftly for me. we had a christmas party on the 23rd and it ended up a few of us singing christmas carols.

on christmas eve, we had the opportunity to do a 'hand chimes' performance. (see pic below) it's rather fun. we perform 6 christmas carols with the chimes after 3-4 practice.

on christmas day, jake cooked the turkey and we had christmas dinner at about 8pm.

bad news was, our pc has gone kaput. POOF was the sound it made after i read a few emails..
i watched a whole lot of taiwanese and japanese series when the pc was kaput.
recommend watching "Attention Please" a jap drama.
still watching silence , a taiwanese series.
currently listening to 183club and 7 flowers song.

ragging

spoke to hui yesterday. she asked me to do a favour for her on the most important day of her life.
to lead the 'ragging'.
i am so honoured and proceeded to ask her what is ragging and googled for the definition of ragging.
*gulp. it doesn't look good based on my google result.
but in wedding term, it would be to 'torture' the groom but in a "fun" way.
i am going to put a 'thinking' cap and plan out the activity. i have been allocated 20mins.

filling

i had my cavity filled up yesterday. in 30 mins, the dentist gave me an anasthetic, a clean, took out the remaining old filling and refill it with white filling! it fills really long though..first the needle for the anasthetic looked a foot long!it was injected to the inside wall of my cheek . i closed my eye most of the time, too chicken to see what the dentist is doing. the drilling sound is scary enough.

the anasthetic took 4 hours to wear off.. luckily i am back to normal now.

which one are you?

I recently read a book Cut the Clutter by C T Ewer. She listed several clutterer's personality. She mentions in her book to target the clutter problem by going to the root of the problem: one's thinking. Which one are you?

Personality no.1 - THE HOARDER
The hoarder's slogan is "This might come in handy one day".
Hoarders save everything (plastic shopping bags, newspaper flyers, the list is endless).
Ask a hoarder why he/she is keeping so many plastic shopping bags, he/she will describe how she can reuse the plastic bags . Problem is , hoarder knows no limits so he/she has plastic bags enough to take up the landfill.

Hoarding is rooted in insecurity, financial or otherwise. Deep down, hoarders are afraid that they'll never have the resouces they need if they let go of any possession. Best remedy: knowing stuffs will be with us always.

Personality no. 2 - THE DEFERRER
The Deferrer's slogan is "I'll think about that tommorrow".
Those of the deferral mindset are guilty of the great set aside. Bills, flyers, old newspaper, items that need cleaning or repair and household projects are all set aside to be dealt with another day.

Deferrers need to be reminded that tmomorrow has no more time or energy than today and that deferring decisions drags down each new day with yesterday's unfinished business. The best remedy: Action. Simply making a start creates the momentum needed to finish the job.

Personality no. 3 - The REBEL
The Rebel's slogan is "I don't want to and you can't make me!"
Rebels were forced to pick up after themselves as children; as adult, they are still expressing the mute and stubborn determination when they are a child. Rebel clutter often centers on household activities.

Best remedy: Reminding the Rebel that he/she is in control of the decisions, and he/she can defuse the inner rebel's imaginary power struggle.

Personality no. 4 - The PERFECTIONIST
The Perfectionist slogan is "Next week, I'll organise everything ...perfectly".
Perfectionists are wonderful people but they live in an all-or-nothing world. They do wonderful things when they do them. Perfectionisim forms an inner barrier to cutting clutter because the perfectionist simply cannot abide doing a less-than-perfect job.

Best remedy: Apply the 20-80 rule: 20 % of every job takes care of 80% of the problem. Give permission to perfectionist to do only 20% of the job to get things going.

Personality no. 5 - The SENTIMENTALIST
The sentimentalist slogan: "Oh the little darling!"
Sentimentalists want to keep everything -old text books, exercise books, school papers, faded greeting cards. However, there's so much to remember that the truly enderaing items get lost in a flood.
Remedy: Changing mindset from an indiscriminate "Awwww!" to a more selective stance. Sort it out, keep the memories and bin the rest!

my problem: I have most of the personality traits listed above!!!!!!

cavity

on sunday after church, i took some bread and ate it while i fellowship with the people.
then i felt strange in the mouth. i bit some metal thingie! it turns out, my filling has chipped!
darn! it is that same tooth ...it has chipped twice! thanks to that nurse from hell who drilled such a big hole in my tooth. for the record, i always get A for my teeth and when this nurse came, she gave me C for my teeth. How can my teeth get so bad when I maintain the same regime!
turns out everyone else gets also get graded horribly by her!

how many of you remember that dental nurse from hell back in St Rita?!
i remember the filling fell out about 10 years ago .the dentist who fixed it for me commented: MY! who's drilled such a big hole before?

anyhow, i have now made an appointment to see a dentist here to fix it.
in the mean time, i have to avoid eating chocolates, sweet cordials, cold stuffs..
*SIGH!!

crassula -transplanted

my bucket propagator - pic on right hand corner shows the crassula i propagated in Autumn.
there were branches , leaves that fell when i repot my older crassula. not wanting to throw away the broken branches i poke the branch into the mix (leaves are just laid on top of the mix) and voila -in Spring- they are so much taller and fighting their way out of the bucket and leaves become new plants. so i transplanted them into their own pots (middle pic). there are still some plants in the propagator bucket yet to be put into individual pots. 

Mt Maunganui

mt maunganui is about 1.5hrs -2hrs drive from auckland. i tagged along to one of jake's traffic conference. mt maunganui is famous for its sandy white beaches and is a favourite spot for surfers. given its name, one has to walk up to the summit of mt maunganui at least once to enjoy its scenery.


comments on pics - (left to right)

• walking on the beach , people were playing beach soccer. i was more concerned of sand getting into my shoes. (day 1)
• pics taken from our room - our room's facing the mountain.
• taking my own shadow early in the morning (day 2) before jake goes to his conference.
• while jake is in his conference, i walked about the main street in town, taking pic of surfer boy.
• the drainage cover is so cute -each one of them has a dolphin on top of it.
  
• lunch break in the car with jake - i was bored , it was sunny..jake was on the phone.
• he's still on the phone - i snap pics of the car
• after his conference, we decided to walk up the mountain. the mountain is 232m high. on our way, we see sheeps grazing. they are shy creatures, they ran when I try to go near them.
• they are sort of everywhere on the lower part of the mountain. btw, you can walk up the mountain or walk around the mountain. there are many tracks to choose from.
• we frequently stop to rest. noticed a ship is sailing into port of tauranga.
• jake is slowly catching up with me.
  
• we reached the summit and i take pics of the sky while i lay on the top of the mountain.
• more clouds pic.
• overlooking the town from the summit.
• taking pics of the cliff
  
• more pics on the mountain, since we walked for an hour plus, we had to take as many pics as possible on top of the mountain.
• going down through the bush track.
• the beach - the black dots are people playing volleyball
• back to sea level.
• walking back to our accommodation.
• notice the kids burying their frens in the sand.
• the garden in our motor inn/apartment.
• hot water pool across our accommodation. i was disappointed to find out its like a big swimming pool.

we tried cafe hasan baba for dinner. it serves middle eastern food ..it is run by kiwi.
jake was super impressed with one of the waiter. we think he is the taukeh's son. he's about 1.35m tall? probably 9-10 years old. and he talks and acts like an adult. (very professional in his tasks too) he wore an ear stud and he's terribly mature for kids his height :P we had garlic bread and some hummus, chickpea filo pastry thingie for entree..


as for main course, i opted for the chicken moussaka and jake had the hassan baba feast (which is lamb rack, and some other meat , can't remember what). i had to doggy bag the moussaka back to the hotel since it was huge.


we actually have the feast menu, so it came with dessert too..we had baklava and some ice cream. i was so full, after dinner we had to go for a walk.

day 2 - i was really craving for fish & chips so we went to the main street shop and ordered kumara chips and a 2 person combo. well, we customised the combo and it is no difference to purchasing each item individually. we had great fun eating it by the beach :)

p/s: notice the two fish & chips was wrapped in the same page of newspaper. AIKS!!!! the fish & chip seller must have many sets of old newspaper.

fuchsia - what's blooming in November

i bought 4 fuchsia in sept and they were about 20-25cm from ground. they are also known as dancing ballerina to some people because the flower resemble what the ballerina wears. the size of the flowers varies just as how human can be petite, tall, bla bla bla..
anyhow, before i further digress, i took some pics of the fuchsia when they started to bud. *i was extremely excited because the plants were real tiny and i have never planted fuchsia before.

conditions needed: -according to the plant tag, fuchsia like shaded place (I place mine south facing, under the eaves) and they need good drainage and regular watering (ie daily)

i bought 4 of them and the names are - celia smedley, beacon rise, sunset and genii. looking at the names, i can almost guess their colours, beacon rise, sunset will have pink colour in it.

anyways when beacon rise starts to bud, (check 2nd row left pic), i was extremely overjoyed.
a few days apart, celia smedley also budded. HEHEHE!!!!!! - can tell celia smedley is going to be white by the light coloured bud.

actually, the plant tag also has a small pic on it but nothing beats the plant flowering physically plus due to transportation, poor organisation, sometimes wrong tag gets placed into the plants.

first set of pics are taken early Nov. 2nd set (below) taken mid November.

check out celia smedley, top left, i love how the flowers look- it has big , white and pink and dark red petals. i flipped up the flowers to check out the inside.

below is the beacon rise, flower is of smaller size but the whole tree is covered with bud.

as of writing, genii and sunset are also budding.

anyhow, i totally recommend celia smedley , seems like a reliable plant, beacon rise is recommended for people who likes the pink colours.

meet Masdevallia Coccinea

I was invited to Michelle's house after the orchid meeting and she decided to give me a Masdevallia Coccinea. when i received the plant, the left (tall spike) is in bud. about a week later, it bloomed. the 3rd one is still to bloom (the middle spike).

i have never tried planting Masdevallia before - borrowed a whole book about Masdevallia from the club library . but i haven't sat down and 'study' it. so far, i mist it every now and then. i understand it originated high up on the mountain approximately 4000m /13,000ft high from sea level..there is a wide range of colours available ..

p/s: michelle is my orchid club friend and has 3 cats which is not really hers but she feeds them and treats them like her children. she has amazing garden and besides growing orchid, she is also into Bromeliad. 

Louises Rainbow x Harold Hirschii

ever since our pc was reformatted, our card reader has failed on us.
i had to resort to downloading photos to jake's laptop and then transfer that to our pc.
it's really taking forever. the above Louises Rainbow x Harold Hirschii (dendrobium cross) was blooming in October.
7 flowers altogether. only one spike survived as the other one couldn't withstand the winter weather. i bought the plant during the visit to the grower sometime in April. 

Walking Her Home

my favourite song by Mark Schultz
he's one of my favourite musician, he plays the piano and his song is always telling a story.

Looking back
He sees it all
It was her first date the night he came to call
Her dad said son
Have her home on time
And promise me you’ll never leave her side
He took her to a show in town
And he was ten feet off the ground
(Chorus)
He was walking her home
And holding her hand
Oh the way she smiled it stole the breath right out of him
Down that old road
With the stars up above
He remembers where he was the night he fell in love
He was walking her home
Ten more years and a waiting room
At half past one
And the doctor said come in and meet your son
His knees went weak
When he saw his wife
She was smiling as she said he’s got your eyes
And as she slept he held her tight
His mind went back to that first night
(Chorus)
He walked her through the best days of her life
Sixty years together and he never left her side
A nursing home
At eighty-five
And the doctor said it could be her last night
And the nurse said Oh
Should we tell him now
Or should he wait until the morning to find out
But when they checked her room that night
He was laying by her side
Oh he was walking her home
And holding her hand
Oh the way she smiled when he said this is not the end
And just for a while they were eighteen
And she was still more beautiful to him than anything
He was walking her home
He was walking her home
Looking back
He sees it all
It was her first date the night he came to call

nz taiwan festival

following auntie Julie and Zhang Ma's invitation, we went to the nz taiwan festival on 4 Nov.


Comments of the pics: 1st row: Snapped a pic of a balloon with the taiwan flag;more flags , the stage and its decors with vintagey looking things, like chinese fan, cupboard that my grandma uses;
2nd & 3rd row: a wedding sedan! -that reminds me of the wedding sedan me and jake sat in shenzhen :P ; the gifts delivered during the wedding; handicrafts that taiwanese primary students make;sheep ,apple and fire engine shaped tv. they look so cute, but ain't cheap and the screen is a bit too small for me. taiwanese rolls; candy floss machine; more 'cakes' by the Bakery king stall;
4th row: the 'bread lady' selling the bread; (there were heaps of stalls there) a poster of the event; throngs of people trying to get to the foodstall and into the hall to see the events and tradestalls;puppet stand, (doesn't it remind you of chinese opera ), jake buying taiwanese produce (sesame candies etc) ;ornamental lion head;me holding the taiwanese sausage (my favourite of all the food I tried) ; cooks busy preparing the food.

the foods we tried: curried noodle with pig kidney(*YIKES) -this dish is certain not for me. It loses to msian laksa hands down. i could be biased but i just didn't really like the taste of it.
the 'pulut panggang' thing is pretty good, rice cake with mushroom and egg -this one is average but i think the rice cake made by the ah poh in sibu pasar malam is better. the 4th pic is a meatball thing -totally NOT my thing!!! the bamboo shoots really stinks...

all in all, I rather enjoy the event, the shows were nice - dances, singing, display of cultural things. the taiwanese sausage has made the trip worthwhile

less than 8 weeks to christmas

there's only less than 8 weeks to christmas. i am looking forward for the statutory break i get during those time. time to do absolutely nothing or if i feel like doing anything, i would potter about.

work has been super hectic. 'month end' definition has changed for me. clock is ticking and i had to deliver out the results for review. thank god for answered prayers - at some point, i feel like pulling out all of my hair ...*argh.

anyways on happier note it's weekend.. *YAY!!!!

finished reading: Pounding the Pavement by Jennifer Van Der Kwast the ending is left to reader's imagination. i don't really like this sort of ending but it is a very entertaining book.

embarking on : Bad Heir day by Wendy Holden

Gardening updates:

last saturday ,transplanted the crassulas i propagated in autumn into their own pots. they seem to have crowd the propagator bucket. check out my cute bucket. didn't take pic of it a week ago where the mix is al covered with new shoots/growths of the crassula.

70s & 80s party

recently BIL's gf organised a surprise birthday party with 70s and 80s as the theme.
guests were invited and sworn to secrecy but birthday boy knows better. he knew we were doing something for him but he isn't prepared for these!!!!




ppl come dressed as 70s chicks, rockers duo, afro boy


charlie's transformation from rockers to er...spice girl?? pass the ball was played. charlie was lucky enough to get the ball 3 times, hence the 3 different outfit he has to wear on top of his own wig and other stuffs..

everyone with their outfit from the pass the ball..

me in the flowery dress and big sunglass courtesy of jocelyn!

howick annual spring show

on sat, sept 30, the howick orchid society held its annual spring show. the committee took friday afternoon to assemble the hall and on saturday morning, it started at 8am-judges judging the plants and trophies awarded.

i volunteered as the certificate writer, so time past real quick and the show opens to public at 10am. i was also in charged of the door, so me and jim, collect and dish out entry tickets to the public.

show was a success. due to my limited memories in my memory card, i took only some 60 pics..but here are my favourites.

1st row: l to r: numerous trophies, beautiful cymbidium, more cymbidiums in different shades of colour, the most right is called Son of Freak. What a name.

2nd row: white paphiopedilum (Slipper orchid), odonts alliance type orchid -they are really colourful and i am tempted to buy to add to my collection but i didn't, as they can be quite demanding.

3rd row: cattleya/laelias, lycaste, more cattleyas or laelias- they come in all shades of colour, thanks to the work of hybridist.

4th row: Pleoines , they are alpine type plants, heaps of australian dendrobiums, another white/greenish intermediate cymbidiums, and finally, the grand champion, - masdevallia.

distressed

as much as i like spring, i also detest it. it gives much of those 10 sec showers all through the day. today the wind is particularly chilly. heard on the news it's due to the south westerly.

anyways i am distressed because many of my plants have been blown all over the place. the mix is all over the compound. *Grrr and it's too cold and wet for me to clean them. i managed to put some of my plant back to where they were.

and i have moved the zygo out on saturday because i discovered mealy bug on one of the leaf of the zygo. (this is a sign of warmth). but now it's raining so much, i am worried the poor plant will not cope. *ARGH! meanwhile, i have taken in the dendrobium (harrold hirsch x louises rainbow) because the flower's starting to bloom

currently :

reading: dan Brown's angels and demons

snacking: jack link's Beef jerky peppered flavour- i feel like i am chewing plastics. the rougan is so much better!!!!