Granny turns 92

Wow! Talk about long life. My grandmother celebrates her 92nd birthday this year.

Okay, I admit, I had to count the candles. :) We weren't sure what was her actual age because not only she was born pre-war, she also follows her Chinese birthdate which is always 1 year extra.

My grandmother bore 15 children. Amazing!! :)

FB-ing

4 gals FB-ing in Rach's house. Rach was teaching her niece to farm virtually. This is bad....

My Grandma's 90th Birthday

We celebrated this auspicious day late last month. In fact we celebrated her 90th birthday twice and she still hasn't reached her 90th birthday.

Last year, we had a family (she bore 15 children and most of them came with their children and grand children) get together in my parents house. Everyone thought the big 90 was last year. So many voices, so many plans and in the end someone volunteered to have the celebration in my parents' house. My parents were okay with it and we got to see our long lost cousins.

Early last month, my mom told us that we have to celebrate my grandma's 90th birthday end of the month after our Kuching trip. We were like ..whaaaat? Didn't we celebrate it last year? It seems that someone miscalculated and this year is her actual 90th birthday (Chinese). According to our calendar she's 89 years old, but the Chinese always add an extra year to the actual birthday.

Rachel suggested going for Min Kok's morning dim sum because she has not eaten dim sum for a long time.

It was a Friday and the only family members who attended were Rach and her husband, my parents, Tusi and I.. and of course my grandmother lah. Looking at her, I was amazed at her good health. She can still walk, eat, bathe herself,... in other words, she is independent. She does go for checkups now and then but she is healthy. She doesn't take any pills at all. Amazing right? And what more, her skin is not darkened with brown spots aka pigmentation. One of these days I'm going to find out her beauty secrets.

Ah.. there is one secret which she told me a long time ago. She asked me to eat fish. At that time fish meat was not one of my favourites. She said that people who worked in air-conditionered place should take fish meat so that their skin will not be so dry. Ever since that day, I started eating fish and actually like eating it. :)

We celebrated her birthday dinner in Regent Restaurant.

8-course dinner plus a plate of longevity noodles.

90 and healthy... wow. I hope when I'm at her age, I will be as healthy and no pigmentation problems like her. :)

Pot Bless Dinner

Two weeks ago, I was invited to an event in FB. The event was to be held in my uncle's house and the occasion was... no one knew. We thought maybe they wanted to celebrate my Aunt Sally's birthday... but her birthday was not until end of July. After a few speculations, the other aunties asked my uncle. It seems that his daughter felt like it was a long time since the last family gathering, so she just made a suggestion and see if all of us wanted to meet for dinner. Aunt Sally said she was making prawn noodles (yummy). Then one of the aunties said maybe we should each bring a dish. Some said okay, some thought we would have too much to eat then, because Aunt Sally was preparing the prawn noodles for everyone.

So, this is how the prawn noodles looked like. Aunt Sally had to do it bowl by bowl. First she "cook" (just put in hot boiling water for a few seconds) the noodles and vege. Then she added the soup. Then it's up to us whether we want to add the meat, prawns and fried onions. The soup was oh-so-good.

The other family members contributed the following -
Aunt Chris - corn beef with eggs , garlic bread and some dragon fruit enzyme dessert.
Aunt Alice - Fried Chicken
Rachel - Pudding
David - barbequed pork meat
Su-Ann - Cheese Cake
My mom - some chinese vege dish, not sure what it is called in English.

I'm not sure who contributed the pizza and boh-boh-cha-cha. Esther and I brought Cream Cracker Cake made by Tusi. I didn't want to make brownies because I knew that there would be more than enough food to feed an army. With Su-Ann's cheesecake and Rachel's pudding, we have covered the dessert part.

You can tell that we are a close-knited family. We love gatherings like this. It's fun. The kids - Brian, Mae-Z and Sze-En were happily playing outside.

And guess what? It was one of my cousin's birthday. He got invited toand we forgot that his birthday falls on the 12th of July.

So now that this is over.. I think our next gathering will be in September - the lantern festival. Yay! Can't wait.

CNY 2009-2nd Day

Like every year, we have our family reunion on the 2nd day of Chinese New Year in Uncle Allan's house. Aunt Alice will cook all the dishes including 1 "ham choy" soup.

We "lou sanged" again.

Pictures are blur but you can see that we are a close-knitted family. There were 54 of us family members who came for this reunion. Quite a big family right?

This was the highlight of the day - One of my cousins had a sting of real fire crackers and he lit them up that day. It probably lasted less that 40 seconds but it was fun to watch.

The children were in the world of their own. The boys were watching TV and the girls were in the room talking. Little Jared went all over the place with his tricycle.

Eve of CNY 2009

We had a reunion dinner in Aunt Sally's house.

My 2nd "loh sang" this year. As usual, I didn't participate in "lou-ing". I was taking photos with my camera. :)

Each auntie brought a dish.

Aunt Zainab made her famous curry puffs and pudding pelangi.

We celebrated my mom's birthday again. It was her actual birthday.

The aunties and uncles chatting.