Awal Muharam long weekend

It was some continuous long weekends in Selangor from 2 weeks back till 2 weeks later. They had Sultan birthday, Awal Muharam, gonna have Christmas and New year holidays.

I went home for some personal matters, at the same time to attend Pei Li's bride side wedding reception. I missed Alan's house warming. I already missed Her Hau's one in October. Sad.

Anyway, things happening at home both cheered me up and brought me down. It has been months since Celine's birthday I last saw the two babies. Both had grown so much. Celine is walking now, like a man walking on stick balancing herself using her legs. Cheryl has become a big sister answering everyone's question confidently. She can recognise all A-Z, reciting after us and spotting some common animals pretty amazing for a two year old plus. This is what happen when she has a highly educated mommy at home coaching her in everything.

3 pretty ladies. Ops, babies. That's baby sucking her yummy thumb all the times

I cannot make it for Pei Li's official chinese marriage ceremony this weekend as I have other programme to attend. Year end is always busy period for everyone. I rushed to her wedding in time to help at the reception desk after the long journey back from visiting sister. Aileng said I looked tired though which is very true. Above photo is compiled from Aileng's camera and 2 below were stolen from Shiao Shuan's facebook. I have to do so as I don't have any photo with bride in it.

Another table of our friends.

Bride and groom with friends at KEC.

Kaya spread

I'd done many things but there is one particular task that I have not done before. I made my own kaya spread last weekend. It is not any new thing in my family because my mom used to make our own kaya spread since I was a kid but it was my first try. I followed my mom's random instruction and ingredients like 2 bowls of sugar with 3 eggs and coconut milk with portion less than one coconut. So end up I had to pour everything into pot and reheat and adding in much more coconut milk because the spread still grainy of sugar texture after it was cooled down. I know the concept of try and error so I didn't whine. It turned out pretty okay and I absolutely love this morning breakfast.

I recover from Cullen's fever, normal now

Time flies, realizing I have not write anything regarding my birthday yet. I had just came back from watching twilight new moon. Ed Cullen looks like a corpse when he was topless. He had the worst freezing cold body comparing to muscular 108 degree Jake Black. His acting skill was awfully in shame that he is lucky he was filmed in good looking way by the movie director or else no millions of girls will be melting over the romanticness in the scenes. I sincerely prefer Twilight to New Moon. Anyway the movie is still great if it doesn't hang at the ending like this one. I would not grade it as bad movie because I love the story. I finished reading all four books, so I already knew what will happen in the next two movies. Not sure why, there were a lot mosquitoes in the cinema today. I had a few mosquitoe bites on my elbow, thigh and back. I was scratching a lot which caused discomfort, GSC should look into this problem.

Anyway back to my birthday celebration, I had a simple one with weeliem and it was the best among past years because at last I got a necklace that I had longed for years. I don't mind what necklace it is as long as it is a necklace, so it is a good gift. I received presents from sweetie herhau and xwei too , a birthday lunch with the usual lunch gang and many birthday wishes. I don't remember what was my birthday wish already at this moment, anyway there is no point of remembering because my wish never came true before.

I made a carrot cake on weeliem's birthday also to accomplish my dream of making one when I have my own oven. I made it although it was not a perfect one, with too moistured texture. Next time, I will surely remember to heat up the oven first before putting in the batter for bake and lesser cinnamon ground. I don't fancy strong cinnamon taste, so I have to reduce the mix on my next try. Practise makes perfect. I took the cake to office and force my pity friends and colleagues to try. I hope it doesn't taste too bad. I would like to make use of the stand mixer weeliem got me, cookies maybe?

My first sewing machine

2nd big thing I got for myself this year. Finally I managed to test it out after 2 weeks laying in the room, and yay! It is working fine. I have to find myself some time to go out and buy material and sew something before end of 2009.

Yam rice

Mom gave me yam last weekend and I made yam rice out of it. I tried not to have direct contact with the inner side of yam at all because I don't want to itch all night long. WL helped me to chop the yam into pieces and I cut them into smaller cubes without touching them with my hand. I don't want the rice to be dark black colour so I added only drop of dark soy sauce. I love today's dinner though it was my first try making yam rice.

Steamboat for 3

My sister is here over the weekend. It gave us excuse to have a small steamboat treat.

Pumpkin Patch

Random pictures from pumpkin patch that I visited in short hour back in Hillsboro.
Pumpkins everywhere. It was a happy colour.

Animal barn visit

More pumpkins. Pick your favourite shapes for Halloween, weigh and pay.

Barn ride. We were seated on hay stack, pulled by this green tractor

Images by me, Oregon Coast

Leaving Oregon - Autumn 09

I am leaving today, in the airport currently.

Good bye autumn
Good bye chilly weather
Good bye beautiful scenery
Good bye yummy Korean food
Good bye green trees
Good bye foggy morning

Note: Photos are taken by Chun at different times and spot

Painted Hill & Sheep Rock

Everywhere was reported to be cloudy, shower or wet on last Saturday. The only place that didn't rain probably is the place we went. I visited some colourful hills with a bunch of monkeys. LOL. The name of this place is Johd Day Fossil Beds National Monument.

(Note: This pic is from Bong's camera)

It is in a very outskirt area near Mitchell. There are no restaurants nearby Painted Hills, the nearest is the tiny one in Mitchell. We visited the Painted Hills which looks like watercoloured hills. The sands and soils has some kind of minerals that create yellow, red, green, goldish colours. Some parts of the hill are very fragile that walking on the ground will cause the soft surface to sink.

By the time we reached there it was in the afternoon where the sun was above our head.

There is a trail where we can walk on to get closer look at the hills.

After that we went to visit Sheep Rock which is the fossil monument. There are a few trails for people to hike and we took the shorted one which was like 1km.

There is this place called Blue Basin at the end of trail. Green or blue-ish rocks/hills. It was quite a boring place because all were hills and hills and hills, number of humans we saw didn't exceed my finger counts.

A group photo at last. We were back to Hillsboro at 11pm. Tired

Fall & Trillium Lake

I am here in Oregon during fall. All the leaves beginning to turn yellow, some to red.. and orange. It is my first time experiencing fall, to tell the truth. The scenery is beautiful. Perfect for a peaceful weekend if you want to spend it slow and comfy.


It was my second and last Sunday morning in Oregon. I wanted to go somewhere that I can take a photo with Mt Hood behind me. Lovely Aichee and hubby introduced me to this place called Trillium Lake where it supposed to have Mount Hood reflection on the water.

This is the photo I took of Aichee accidently when I was swinging my camera. Anyway, I kinda love it. Feels like the world around her moving nonstop, going back in time.

We stopped by the road side on the way up to the lake, and took some photos, which looks something like Yosemite valley.

There is supposed to be Mount Hood at the end and it's reflection in the calm water. However it was really cloudy and grey on Sunday. There isn't any hope to see the mountain at all. We hung around for like thirty minutes or plus hoping for the cloud banks to slowly shift away. But they didn't because there was like clouds everywhere. Anyway, it was nice to just be there. Twillight kind of weather..

This man had the lake all by himself. He was out there fishing with his small little puppy on the floating boat. We went for dimsum later on, not a dissapointment because the food was not bad.

My Grand Canyon trip

I squeezed a tight Grand Canyon trip on the next day I arrived in Arizona. I asked Wee Meng if he would like to go with me again to Grand Canyon because he visited the place many times before. I always see pictures of the magnificent Grand Canyon from people that travelled to The States but I haven't been there myself. Despite the short trip, to be exact 3 days, I had to Chandler, hardly I must visit the sandstone hills at least once in a lifetime. There isn't much chance to travel here again after this trip, I guess.


Early Sunday morning, we departed from my hotel. The drive took about 4.5 hours. Luckily I had Wee Meng to chauffeur me as I have not drive in any road in Arizona before.. Pity him that he has to hold the steering wheel whole day.


This is a must-take picture to prove that I have been to Grand Canyon National Park. The wind was strong that day. The weather board put 100m/h of max wind. After the stop to snap this photo, both of us decided to put our jackets on.

We were told to drive along the road which we will see the canyon from all the different points, from the map. We stopped at all the points near east entrance station, South Rim.

I can't really remember which point all these photos were taken because the views look almost the same from every point with the Colorado river flowing in different direction but the canyon stand still, layer of different brown tone. It was very windy, too strong that I can feel my body were leaning to a side and both my legs were not touching the ground whenever the wind blow. There were a few times my bag almost flew away if I didn't hold on tight to it.

This view I am not sure where it is. It can be either Grandview, Moran , Lipan or Navajo Point

There is a viewing tower to watch the dessert view

The dessert view

This was about an hour before sunset. This is the hermits rest. We came here in shuttle bus provided from the village

I have to show at least one picture of Wee Meng because he is the honorouble tour guide. He was trying to act courage by sitting at one of the cliff overseeing the canyon. Kill me if you want me to sit over there.

We watched sunset in one of the point. I am not sure. I think this is Hopi Point at ~6.10pm. It was once in a lifetime opportunity, to watch sunset and Grand Canyon, one of US's national park.

I was exhausted from this trip because continuosly I slept only 4 hours everyday until the day after I reached Oregon. Anyway, a big thank you to Wee Meng for his generous time accompanying me.

I left Arizona!!!

After the rush trip from Penang to Arizona, at last I am settling down in Oregon for a short time. This is a place where I love to be. Chilly. I like seeing trees, grass and green more to rocks, sand and brown. But this is not for long. I will be back in 2 weeks time. Anyway, things are really crazy here and I missed lunch on the first day I was in Arizona, not forgetting about how I ate the melted polystrene foam for dinner. It was pathetic except for the golden opportunity to travel and the good friends I have when I landed in the stranger's land. Basically they are the best people I met when I first landed.

Thanks for picking me up from airport, the help to solve my rental car issue, sending me to my flight at 5am in the morning, home cooked lunch, company for dinner and 3 days of feeling home when I was there.

Gonna sleep soon, lack of sleep lately.

Yee's wedding

I am still having my whole mind full of Twilight movie's scene after watching it at her hau's place yesterday. Now I put the fault on weeliem because he told me that this is a bad movie and I didn't even want to watch it. This movie is so goooooood. Edward Cullen is a super gorgeous vampire. If weeliem not coming back tomorrow morning, I will forget how he looks like already.. okay, I am joking. I am looking forward for the new Twilight movie, New Moon in the theather. I can't wait. I have to stop wiki-ing and google-ing


Enough of the teenager scream of cute Robert Pattinson, I am going back into reality. I was here over the weekend because I had a few buddies coming over. It was Yee's wedding last Sunday. I had this really bad food poisoning over the food we took on Saturday, we ate all spicy and sour food.

Three of us from her hometown, accompanied her on her wedding day. It was a sunny and bright day.



Teamed up with Yee's female coursemates, a photo taken with the pretty bride



Wedding reception.. Yee's dinner gown was super beautiful, her make up was really natural stunning.



Four of us stayed together for the past 2-3 nights. Lucky that they were here, accompanying me. We had enough liquor on every nights, thanks to aileng for the supplies :D

I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him... Ops.. my mind is still with Twilight. Bubbye..

stir-fried tau-kua with pork

In one of my previous entry, Joan was asking for tofu recipe. I didn't make any tofu today but it is "tao kua", which I guess one type of tofu too. This morning started hot and humid. Although we have this blackout curtain the heat still penetrate through, maybe because our home is facing the morning sun and is high rise up without any blockage from building or tree. Anyway, after a while it began to pour. Not too heavy but just enough to keep my mouth shut for the day.

I dragged myself into the kitchen and checked what I have in the refrigerator to cook for today. I still have the old cucumber which mom gave me 2 weeks ago but there is no pork rib! I settled with chicken for the cooling soup tonight. Everything with wolfberries went into the crockpot for dinner. Now, what for lunch? I will just go with something simple as my food storage is almost to empty. There is this "tau kua" I purchased from Sunshine last week. I need to go to market to restock.


Fun starts here..

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1. Cut 2 "tau kua" into cubes before frying. Fry the "tau kua" with ample of oil until the skin is golden in colour. Scoop and keep aside.




2. Slice about 100g pork into small pieces. Mix with 1 tbsp of corn flour and 2 tbsp of soy sauce.




3. Chop 2 shallots into fine pieces
4. Heat up 3 tbsp peanut oil and saute the shallots.
5. When shallots start to become fragrant gold, throw the pork in and stir fry until the meat is cooked.
6. Add in "tau kua", enough salt for taste, 2 tbsp oyster sauce and water
7. Simmer , sprinke pepper and dish out. Serve hot with rice



Something simple for Saturday afternoon.