Teh Tarik at Sheraton Subang

Two Saturday's ago, I attended a wedding in Sheraton, Subang. The wedding ceremony ended at about 5.30pm and guests were to stay put at the hotel till dinner at 7pm. The wedding couple had some snacks and drinks for us (but no chairs) while we waited.

A group of us were feeling bored and wanted to sit down and have a drink. Someone knew of a Mamak restaurant opposite the hotel and he said that the teh tarik and kuih-kuih there was quite good. But then it was raining quite heavily and we couldn't cross the street without getting wet. So we decided to have our teh tarik at the hotel's bakery section.

Most of us ordered teh tarik. We didn't how much it cost till the waitress told us that they were having a promotion. 1 glass of teh tarik cost RM18++ (gulp!) and if we were to order a pastry or a slice of cake it would only cost RM20++. Wah... so expensive... one glass of teh tarik outside cost only about RM1.20.

Kiasu people like us who ordered a drink had a cake each too. There were 13 of us. The bill came up to... I don't know... Rajen paid for all. It was certainly the most expensive teh tarik I have ever drunk.

Giant Mushrooms

Recently my parents went to Guilin, China for a vacation.

They saw some giant mushrooms and couldn't resist buying a few to let us see. Hmm... I wonder if they have already cooked and ate them. I didn't see anymore of these mushrooms when I was there yesterday.

May is a Busy Month

Let's see my schedule -

May 1st - A visit to the Chiling Waterfalls in Kuala Kubu Bahru

May 8-16th - Vacation to the land of Kangaroos and Koala Bears

May 23 - Climbing Gunung Ledang (Mount Ophir)

May 29 - 31st - Short trip up north - Penang and Ipoh

Kidz Safari is supposed to be on the 30th of May but I think they are pushing it to June. I am hoping they do that because I like to see kids (in general) having fun.

A Leak Somewhere

Last July, we were only paying RM7.15 for our water usage. Now we're paying more than RM20 and sometimes RM30 for a month's water usage. Gosh... it's almost as high as our electricity bill. This means either the water meter is spoiled or there's a leak somewhere in the house. We suspect the latter because the meter was moving (very very slowly) even when we were not using any water.

Sigh... have to spend some money on external pipes!!.

Those Nasty Creatures Called Termites

This morning I went to my storeroom to look for some of my big bowls. Yes, I do keep some of my plates and bowls there because I do not have a proper kitchen cabinet.

My storeroom was in a mess. Every once in 6 months or so, I would attempt to clean it, but I can't seemed to recall when was the last time I did it. I'm not here to write about my laziness so let me continue with my story.

I started digging for the bowl. It was still in the box. I don't think have ever used it before. When I open the box, I saw small creatures moving inside it. It was so "geli-fying". I called Mctc to have a look. We decided to do something about it after breakfast. So at 11am, knowing that we should not delay any longer, we got to work. Slowly one by one, we took out all the things from the store room. We saw more tiny creatures on a half-chewed box. And more underneath a pile of posters. I still keep posters of Guy Sebastian, Arvil Langvine and.. some others. The stack of posters were about knee high and I used them as rough papers. Fortunately we had our Mortein can spray and sprayed at the termites.

Thank God they attacked the storeroom and not upstairs where I kept all my precious books and notes.

I threw a lot of junk away, I managed to save a few things including a barbie doll. It was still in the plastic packaging, so the doll was saved. But a gift from my ex-boyfriend had to be thrown away because there were markings left by the termites. I kept that gift for 20 years!!!.

I didn't managed to save some of the beading works I did for Indran's (my cousin) wedding decoration. I spent a lot of time on stringing the beads.

But I was glad to throw away a lot of things... 7 big black garbage bags were all thrown into the nearest big rubbish container. There were about 3 more boxes of cardboards and posters which were not destroyed by the termites and we intend to sell them off tomorrow.

I still have a lot of things, but I can safely say, I have thrown away 2/3 of junk from the storeroom.

My storeroom now looks like this. Mctc did most of the cleaning. He doesn't mind getting his hands and feet dirty. We took about 5 hours just to clear the things out from the storeroom and another 2 1/2 hours brushing, washing and getting rid of the termites markings. There were at least 3 black patches on the floor and some on the walls.

I did take 2 pictures of the half eaten boxes but... it's too ugly and I don't think you want to see them.

At the moment, the 1/3 junk that I will be keeping is scattered around my living room. I need to throughly clean the storeroom again before I put my things there again.

I am now too tired to write anymore.... I still have another house-related headache and I will write about it later.

One Fine Day

It used to be " I'm working on it". Now it has changed to "One fine day".

Over the past few years many friends from overseas (especially friends from America) had been trying to get Mctc to visit them. His standard answer would be a smile and "I'm working on it".

Ever since the September 11 bombings in NY, Malaysians have to go through a short interview with an embassy's representative when applying for a US visa. Not only that, the processing fee is expensive, and if you do not pass the interview, they won't refund the fee. When I applied for the US visa in the year 2002, it cost about RM247 (something like that, I can't remember). Now it cost RM440 plus RM27.
Malaysians also need to have visas for countries like Australia, China, Canada...

This past week, he changed his words and told me... "one fine day, we'll go to _____ and _______." He told that to a few other friends too. He wanted to see snow. That was his main criteria. He wanted to see how people from the West lived.

Yesterday morning we were looking at the calendar. I've already checked for cheap flights to Australia, somewhere end Jul and early Aug. You can only find snow up on the mountains during winter time. Of course we could go visit Ruth in Minnesota during Christmas time too. There should be snow where she lives. But then, the hassle of getting the visa, and the flight cost a bomb especially during year end. We weren't so keen on European countries because the exchange rate and cost of living is high and also because of the language barrier.

He said his mother has 2 medical appointments in July and August. Sigh....Australia is out then.

Then suddenly he said... "Maybe we should plan something in May, somewhere mid-May?" I was thinking... May's next month. I said aloud, "What about Genting?" (Genting Highlands is another one of his "one fine day" which was suppose to materialised in February, but his mom was in the hospital and we forgot all about it.)
He said no.. that was for another fine day. He wants to go overseas. I calmly said... wait, let me check the cost of the flight tickets first. I went upstairs to check the price and came down smiling... gosh.. it was so cheap. I remembered my sister went to that same place last year and it cost her 3 times the amount I would be paying.
I reminded Mctc that there won't be any snow in that country in May. He said we could always go there again during winter.

We made up our minds immediately. But after a while, I remembered that our passports would be expiring in Nov this year. So I suggested taking our passport photos immediately (that was yesterday morning) and renewing our passports today.

We reached the immigration dept before 12pm, gave them 2 passport photos, our old passports and a form containing our particulars. We paid RM300 each and was told come collect our new passports at 2pm. Slightly after 2.30pm we went to get our new passports. I must say, I'm really impressed at this department. I didn't have to wait at all. Well, maybe only half a minute for the lady to check through a pile of approved passports lah.

Anyway, We got our new passports and went home to book our flights. It was RM600 more expensive, so I changed the return date to one day earlier.

As soon as the flights were confirmed we called up the person whom we were going to visit to tell her that we were coming over.

Now this is what I call "impromptu".

A Happy Wedding

Last Saturday, my friend Pam got married to Gareth. The wedding ceremony was held in Sheraton Subang at 4pm. She wanted a garden wedding, but ended up walking down the aisle in one of the hotel 's multi-purpose rooms. It was raining and they couldn't have a garden wedding. Nevertheless, she looked positively radiant, and was laughing gaily as she walked down the aisle at 4.45pm. Yes, the wedding started 45 minutes late and Gareth got worried when she didn't arrive on time. :)

Pam and her brother.

Exchanging of rings and lighting the unity candles by the mothers.

Cocktails after the wedding ceremony while the wedding couple and relatives were having (or performing?) the tea ceremony.

The main table was decorated with beautiful purple, pink and white flowers.

There were about a hundred guests. I thought the dinner would start on time, seeing most of the guests were early. After the wedding most of us lingered around the hotel while Pam and Gareth had the tea ceremony, and at 7pm, most of the guests were seated at the dining tables waiting for the bride and bridegroom to take their places at the main table.

Dinner only started at 8.30pm and lasted till almost 11pm. The dishes were surprisingly good for hotel standards. Let's see.. what was the difference.. instead of the usual err..fried (?) chicken, we had the whole chicken cooked in herbal sauce. This makes the chicken very tender and soft, and easy to eat. The broccoli and scallops were quite good and there weren't any balance of this dish at our table. Then we had the sambal fried rice with prawns (they were very generous with the prawns) instead of the normal bland lotus leaf rice. And they put vanilla ice-cream instead of ice in the honey-dew melon dessert. We left the hotel at 11.15pm and reached home after midnight.