Bukit Kepayang After a Long While

Gosh... when was the last time I went up to Bukit Kepayang? I can't remember. Too long ago..

Yesterday my sisters and I were thinking of doing something today. I suggested going to Kunatan, to hike Bukit Panorama (Panorama Hill), but both of them were reluctant because of the long journey. It will take about 5 hours to reach there and it has been raining the past few days and it will be such a waste to drive 5 hours and not climb the hill.

Then Rach suggested going to Genting to lepak (go up just for fun). I was kind of reluctant too because I thought if they didn't want to go to Kuantan, I might as well spend some time with Mctc. Today's his birthday. :)

In the end we decided to go to Bukit Kepayang. A very low hill. It takes about 20-25mins to reach the top. Aunt Chris were with us when we discussed this and she said that she wanted to join.

We started about 7AM. Sze-En and Brian came along. I was surprised that Sze-En was willing to wake up so early. You must understand - she really loves to sleep.

The sky was really magnificent today. We watched it change colours. So beautiful...

Going up this hill was no sweat at all.. It was easy. The kids went up ahead of us, Sze-En had so much energy.

We reached the top in no time at all. This was Brian's first time here and I think he wasn't impressed at all. He said he like hiking at Gunung Datuk better.

We met PeterLai, one of our regular mountain climbers up on this hill. He told us that the lightning striked the roof some time back and showed us where it went after that.

As we were walking down the hill, we saw so many monkeys. They came out from their hiding place because some people brought food along to feed the monkeys.

As usual, after our hill climbing at Bukit Kepayang we went to eat in FS at Oakland. I had my usual Kuey Teow soup, Rach and Brian had char kuey teow, Esther and Aunt Chris had prawn noodles and Sze-En ate Ah-yee loh si fun.

After dropping Aunt Chris and Brian home, Sze-En asked if we wanted to go shopping.. either in Jusco and Tesco. All of us wanted to go back and have or shower, but I suddenly remembered that I had to buy something and it was very urgent and I can only get it in Tesco. Sze-En was so happy to be able to go shopping.

Look at that.. we came out with a trolley full of newly purchased items. This is our impromptu shopping, I wonder how many trolleys we need for a planned shopping spree... :)

Changing Broadbands

All these while I've been using Celcom internet service provider to get connected to the internet. At first the service was okay, the speed was reasonable for the price that I paid. I was using my phone as a modem so the speed wasn't that great, but at least I could read my mails, chat, blog, facebook, and surf a little.

This phone was used only to connect to the internet.

Lately I was having trouble getting into the net. Sometimes when I was trying to connect, the message came out saying that I was connecting through another service provider - Maxis . Strange isn't it?

And once I got connected, it'd take maybe 10-2o minutes to get to the page I want to visit. Sometimes it would take even longer. It was just so frustrating. Just to make a comment on FB may take me like 40 minutes or so.

Most of the time I will use the phone as a modem and connect it to my laptop. Lately I feel that Celcom service was very poor. Everytime I get connected, I could only chat in MSN for a few minutes before the line went local and I would have to reconnect again. What I usually do is to switch off my phone, remove the battery and sim card for a second and put them back in the phone again, switch on the phone and try to connect. I would do this for at least 10-20 times a day. (FRUSTRATED to the MAX)

Last week I discovered Maxis Broadband :)

This little gadget cost slightly less than RM300 and each month I only have to pay RM68 for the service. The speed is up to 3.6Mbps (although most of the time it's 1.5- 2.5Mbps), but for this package the fair usage is only 2GB a month. (Meaning that I can upload/download up to 2GB before Maxis throttle my bandwidth).

Once I signed up with Maxis, I went to Celcom to cancel my data line. To my horror, they said that I was tied to them for 1.5 years and I still have another 2 more months to go. Alternatively I could pay RM350 to stop the service. I can't remember them telling me about that clause when I signed up for the package. I told them I don't mind paying for the 2 months, just that they will have to give me a good service (as in better internet connection). I thought that was fair...

FB-ing

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

Sze-En was sick

Last week, Sze-En was sick. She had fever and a little bit of cough and running nose. It was the last week of school before her term break and her school was having their mid term exams.

So last Thursday, I went to my mom's house to "lepak" (hang around) and I saw Sze-En with a face mask.

She was told to wear her mask all the time and she could only take it off if she wanted to drink or eat. She has been such an obedient child, wearing the mask and drinking lots of water.. for this reason - she wanted to go to church camp the following week.

She even had all her dolls quarantined too. Hmm... should ask Tusi to make the face masks for all her dolls.

My New Slippers

Crocs.. never thought I would own one, because theynot only cost the earth, it is also hard to maintain in the sense that I cannot put it under direct sunlight too. The material would harden.. that's what the vendor said.

Anyway, the vendor was selling factory rejects, and the slight discolour on the white um.. band (?) didn't matter much to me as long as it's cheap. :)

Dragon Fruit Farm

My first taste of the dragon fruit (white) was about 7 0r 8 years back. It looked horrible.. white flesh with black dots, how could anyone eat that ugly looking fruit? The name itself was interesting enough and since I had never eaten one before, I took a slice and.. at this moment I can't recall what I thought about it. All I know was, I am not attracted to the fruit as compared with other fruits.

A few years ago.. I think it was Minch who introduced the red (actual colour is more of reddish-purplish) dragon fruit to me. I took a bite and fell in love with it.

The fruit is expensive.. the good ones cost RM8 per kilo. Averagely it cost RM5-6 per fruit. There are also the cheaper ones.. but it may be sour, so usually I'll try to get the big ones.

Everytime Minch goes to her mom's place she has to pass through some dragon fruit farm. Last weekend I decided to accompany her to visit her mom.

We passed by a farm and stop to get some dragon fruit. The lady in charged allowed us to take pics of her farm. The plant looked scary to me. Just imagine that all the plants were octopuses.... scary right?!

The flower and fruit.


The fruit.


It will end up looking like this. Purplish in colour.

And the flesh looks like this. Not very interesting to look at, but the taste good. The farmers sell cheaper at their farm. We bought 8 fruits for RM25. We also bought some smaller ones for Aunt Christ to make enzyme. Those cost RM15 for about 7pcs.

Long Awaited Evening

Our trip to PD was postponed twice. See, you must never PLAN to go to PD. It has to be a spur-of-the-moment kind of decision. We were supposed to go 3 Sundays ago, but Brian had guests from America and Sze-En... I'm not sure why. 2 Sundays ago, Wayne was sick. Last Sunday, Matt had a meeting from 2-4pm and Rachel had to bring her aunt for shopping. Yep, we were busy that day, but we made it to the beach.

This time, Om was with us. Sze-En had too much school work to do and she had to forgo this trip.

Rach and I bought 2 floats for Brian and Sze-En while we were in Kuantan a few months ago. Last week, I went to Tesco and bought a smaller float and a beach ball for Wayne. We reached PD at about 5pm. There was no sun and we didn't have to put on the sun block lotion.

We asked Om and Brian to build a moat while Rach and I pump air into the floats. It was a difficult task. Wayne came much later with his dad. He was so happy here, but later the father made him change into a proper swimming costume. That's when he started screaming and tried not to wear the costume. It took 3 of us to put on the costume for him.

Om, she wanted us to bury her body with sand. She was really happy. She has never been to the beach before and you can imagine her letting go of herself. The whole time, she screamed joyfully, till Minch got a little fed-up with her.

Minch brought a kite too, but it wasn't very windy.

Ah.. Brian sitting on the float and feeling relaxed as the waves pushed him to the shore. Om was a little too heavy for the float and she kept falling off it. Hmm... maybe because she was too wiggly.

Brian was scared of the small sea creatures and at one period of time refused to go into the sea. Later, someone suggested swimming in the pool and Brian happily agreed. Sigh what a waste. The sea is much more fun than the swimming pool.

I did not take many pictures because my camera has run out of battery.

We left the beach at about 7pm.