CNY highlights – Sungai Lembing

As is customary on the third day of CNY, we went to MIL’s ancestral house in Sungai Lembing. The house is now occupied by MIL’s fourth brother, and her many siblings typically congregate at their ancestral house on the third day. The house is located at the end of the Sungai Lembing village beside the hills.

Watching hubby's uncle lighting up some fireworks

I love this shot - Yiu Yiu looks so natural

There’s a small stream right in front of the house. After having a scrumptious lunch prepared by MIL’s SIL, we took Yiu Yiu for a dip in the stream. The water was clean, cool and refreshing, typical of water from the hills.

Hubby’s cousin’s three children (MIL brother’s grandchildren) soon joined us in the stream. They had never been to the stream, despite having made numerous trips to visit their grandparents there.

Building an embankment

(Left) Don't move, or I'll shoot. (Right) Nah mummy, take these back as souvenirs

CNY highlights – Lion dance

Every year on the first day of CNY, we would visit hubby’s classmate open house, whose dad is a prominent businessman in Kuantan. Coincidentally, his classmate’s wife is my course mate in university. Actually hubby and I met through them - him being the “heng dai” and me being the “ji mui” during their wedding, but that’s another story.

Each year, there will be a lion dance performance during the open house. However, this time around, I noticed that the troupe’s costumes were really nice, and there were poles set up around the compound. We later found out that the troupe was from Khuan Loke, winner of the 2007 Hong Kong World Lion Dance Championship. The performance was indeed superb, with lots of mid-air acrobatics. Here are some shots taken with my new Olympus mju 1050 SW.

Mid-air acrobatics

Passing of mandarin orange from one lion to another

CNY highlights – Teluk Chempedak beach

We went back to Kuantan on Friday afternoon to avoid the Saturday exodus. That allowed us to have a leisurely Saturday and we took Yiu Yiu to the beach. She enjoyed herself thoroughly playing sand...

No prize for guessing which footprint belongs to mummy and which belongs to Yiu Yiu

...and even ventured into the water. The waves were pretty strong but she enjoyed having the waves splashing onto her legs as they broke onto the shore.

I love this happy shot, unfortunately it turned out blurry

This is another fave shot of mine, father and daughter bonding

We went there again on the first day of CNY, this time with BIL and his family. Again, the kiddos enjoyed themselves thoroughly – luckily they didn’t fret when it was time to leave.

First day of work in the Niu year

I started work on Tuesday, the 9th day in the Year of the Ox. Coincidentally, my company’s Sports & Recreational Club chose the same day for the office CNY celebration. At about 9.30am, the distinct sound of clashing cymbals and Chinese drum was heard at the reception area. The lion dance troupe had arrived





The two lions danced and pranced around the reception area before splitting up – with one going into the sales area, and the other going into the marketing area



After completing their rounds on our floor, these two lions proceeded to the upper floor where the rest of the departments (finance, corporate affairs, HR, IS, medical) is located.

This was then followed by a scrumptious brunch for everyone.

Bento #16 - #19

These were her bentos for this week.

Monday – took shortcuts and bought her a char siew pau. Completed her light meal with slices of rose apple, bought at the Tapah rest area when coming back from Ipoh on Saturday.



Tuesday – noodles in soya and oyster sauce, decorated with carrot flowers and french beans as stem and leaves. The flower cutter is a bit too big for her bento box, so the flowers looked oversized. At the side are some home made meatballs and butterfly shaped guava, also bought from the Tapah rest area.



Wednesday – got the idea of making this flower pizza bread from here and here. I made two extra pieces for myself but when I ate them in the office, the toasted bread had turned “rubbery”. I knew in that instance that Yiu Yiu would not eat hers and true enough, the babysitter said she only dug out the fillings and ate them. I used the sausage cutter I got from Chooi Peng to cut the sausages into fish and penguin but they didn’t turn out nice. Not sure what I did wrong. In the silicon cup are slices of rose apple.



Thursday – a simple bento which didn’t take too long to prepare. Just had to cut the almond brownie into three small pieces and fried some chicken nuggets. At the side are guava slices in the shape of bear.



There’ll be no bento today as hubby and I will be leaving for a short trip in a short while. In fact, Yiu Yiu spent the night at the babysitter’s yesterday, and will be there until we come back on Tuesday.

Broken bento box

Yiu Yiu came back from kindy on Monday with this.

Here’s the conversation that took place:
Mummy: What happened to the box?
Yiu Yiu: I don’t know.
Mummy: You don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know?
Yiu Yiu: It’s spoilt already lar…
Mummy: Who spoiled it?
Yiu Yiu: Nobody, it spoiled by himself (itself) one!
Mummy: Spoilt already so how, cannot use already lor.
Yiu Yiu: Use the other one lar, the bigger one.

Mummy: (So you say pengsan or not?)

*Me in my uniform*

This was a quick shot that mummy captured yesterday morning just before we left for school. Yesterday was the first time I wore my school uniform. Actually, two pairs of uniform were given to us a week before Chinese New Year, and even though I was only given size S, they were still too big for me. I was practically swimming in them. The next day, mummy brought the uniforms back to school and asked if she could exchange for XS but teacher said S is the smallest. So mummy had no choice but to take my uniforms to the tailor for alteration. She only managed to collect them back from the tailor just before we went back to Yeh-yeh house for Chinese New Year.

Don’t you think I look smart in my uniform?

My new camera…

…is not a dSLR yet.

The product I’m managing did extremely well last year, creating a record of sorts for my company. My boss was kind enough to put up a request for some reward and recognition for the team, and this is what we got – an Olympus FE 330.

Since one of the senior managers in Olympus Malaysia is hubby’s ex-colleague, he managed to help me to upgrade the camera to their latest Olympus mju 1050 SW – I just needed to pay an additional RM350.

This new compact is timely, since I’m getting increasingly disappointed with the quality of photos taken with my faithful 5-year old Olympus mju 410. I experimented with the new camera over the Chinese New Year period and I’m pretty happy with its many functions and settings, though in some aspects, I feel it is still lacking slightly behind my sister’s Canon Ixus 850, which I’ve been using for most of my overseas trips over the last year or two.

As for the dSLR, well, I’m still contemplating, since it’s a huge investment. I’m worried that it may just become a white elephant as I’ll probably underutilise it, since I know next to nothing about photography. The other consideration is whether to get a Canon or Olympus. I’m more inclined towards Canon, since they have one of the best dSLR cameras around, but hubby thinks I should choose Olympus, since he can get it at below retail price, and servicing and spare parts would not be a problem, since he knows people in Olympus. For now, this plan will remain somewhere in the recesses of my mind.

Bento #11 - #15

These were her bentos for the 3rd week of school. We left KL for Kuantan for the Chinese New Year break last Friday and I had forgotten to bring with me the cable for downloading these photos from my camera. So these photos had to wait till we got back to KL.

Monday – french toast in the shape of dolphin and heart, chicken nuggets and pear in the shape of butterfly and fish.



Tuesday – skewers of white bread with cheesy sausage, and pear in four different shapes of butterfly, fish, bear and rabbit. Yiu Yiu didn’t touch the bread and sausage, and only managed to finish the pear slices while in school. Everytime I asked why she didn’t finish her food at school, she’ll not fail to give me this excuse, “Teacher Esther says KEEP.” She’s generally a slow eater and I suspect she’s too busy being kaypohchee when it’s time to eat. And since their break time is only 30 minutes, she cannot finish her food when the time is up.



Wednesday – Yiu Yiu brought back two pieces of potato bread from the babysitter yesterday and since I was a little disheartened by my unappreciatiative audience, I just packed one piece of the bread, together with some fish fingers for her. At the side were some guava slices. All my fancy cutters were too big for this small seedless guava so I ended up using only a simple round cutter. The small bits and pieces of guava were cut by my little kaypohchee, using several really itsy bitsy cutters in various shapes.


Thursday – potato bread again, with a heart shaped hard boiled egg for protein. The bento box wasn’t wide enough so the heart was a little squashed. I followed this veteran bento packer’s tips and kept stirring the egg while cooking so the yolk stayed in the centre, unlike the previous time when the yolk sank to one side. In the pink bottle was some soya sauce to go with the egg, and guava slices in the shape of bear. There were again some itsy bitsy pieces, handiwork of little miss kaypohchee.


Friday – I didn’t want to stock up on food in my fridge since we would be away for the Chinese New Year break, I just prepared some spaghetti bolognese, using my frozen bolognese sauce. Gave her some peeled grapes but she wanted to use the itsy bitsy cutters again so I had to oblige and gave her some guava to work on.


Kindy will be starting again next week, and I’m contemplating whether to still pack her food for school, since she almost always doesn’t eat them at school. Maybe I should just take shortcuts and pack her off to school with breads/buns/pastries from the local bakeries.

Online shopping

Several years ago, when online shopping started becoming popular, many people, including yours truly, were skeptical about the reliability and security of online shopping, especially when shoppers need to disclose confidential information such as credit card details as well as a shipping address. Now, many years on, online shopping has become a part of life for many. I normally shop online for flights and hotels, while hubby typically shops for electronic products. Just recently, he bought an iPod, specifically an iPod shuffle.

I fell in love with his new toy the moment the MP3 player was shipped to us. It is only 1.62 inches long and weighs only half an ounce. I love the light blue colour that hubby chose but apart from light blue, it’s also available in silver, green, blue and red.