Little Cozy Corner

Despite the floods down at Newcastle, Ted, Sis and I took a drive down there to visit my Aunt and have lunch with them today. Although the route we took hardly showed any signs of bad floods, there were debris everywhere. The other sign that the floods were in town was the view of top halves of trees and loads of stagnant waters. There goes the golf courses - everything under water. The weather was very typical Sydney. We got rain and sun happening alternately which made me wonder whether it was a good idea not to put any washing on, which we in the end decided not to.

Anyway, lunch was buffet at East Maitland Bowling Club and it was awesome! The variety of food was good and they had almost everything from salads to seafood to Chinese and the all favourite Aussie meat cuts. I made sure I took a little of everything so that I had room for dessert and I didn’t regret it. The extremely rich chocolate slice/cake was yummylicious!!! I was a pig and had 3 pieces. I couldn’t resist it! *drools*

We also had constant entertainment provided by my cousins son, Freddie who will turn 2 yrs old on 30/6. He is SUCH a lovable and cute baby - you couldn’t not like him! And to think that he took to me and Sis with such ease was a total surprise coz he’s not met us before. Well, I have but it was so long ago…..and he’s just such an adorable little vegemite! Did I mention that he’s little Einstein in the making? He’s already started on his periodic table. He knows that water has oxygen in it and that the sun has helium. I was gobsmacked!

Ted seems to like this picture of me carrying Freddie since I’m also ‘carrying’ Kecik. It’s a scenario he’d like to see more often, or so he says. :rolleyes:

Although we had to hurry home after lunch since Ted was working, I had some time to take a few snapshots of flowers in my Aunt’s garden. I think the green fingers run in my Mum’s family coz my Aunt’s flowers were just *speechless* and it’s WINTER!! Can you imagine how it will be like in spring?? Wow….

Aren’t those orchids and Camelias simply gorgeous? Don’t ask me what those flowers in the beginning is….I don’t know.

Zorro and Bingo have been extremely naughty the past week or so. Would love to blame them but I can’t - how could I possibly blame that au naturel need to mate? They have been wailing and howling to go out and when we finally do let them out, they stay out for at least 20 hours before returning to recuperate from extreme exhaustion from shagging and of course, conquering other males, if there are any around. But no matter how naughty, stubborn, irritating and disgusting they can be, I can’t help falling in love with their individual personality. I’m so going to miss them when I leave for Sydney in about 3 weeks time.

 Does anyone remember Timon? I used to write about him/her a lot in my blogspot. No idea what’s happened after I returned him/her to the place where he/she was found.

Ps. This is me just going crazy over my Powerpoint 200!! :nerd:

This should have been up yesterday since it was Mother’s Day yesterday but since we came back so late and my internet connection is still out of whack, I had to wait till now to post it up. I’m going over to the computer shop later to screw the guy who sold me a modem which only seems to work in his shop. Bah!! *not amused lar*

Anyway, Mother’s Day actually started in church when our priest gave us a sermon on how our first experience of true love is from our mothers. I wholly agree….she carried me for 9 months, suffered morning sickness and horrible heartburns and then, suffered even more to bring me into the world, and finally followed by decades of bringing me up. If it wasn’t love that she had by enduring all this pain and suffering, and most of the time, in silence, then I don’t know how else to define a mother’s love. From my experience, it is unconditional and nothing is required in return but as a daughter, I owe my whole life to her, I’m eternally bounded by her love.

Last night, the 3 of us had dinner at Kofi Haven. They had a special buffet dinner for this occasion at RM29.90++ with a live band accompanying dinner. The band happened to be a part of the band which played for my wedding so it was really good. I thoroughly enjoyed it and more importantly, so did Mum. Each mother was given a door gift and since I’m 2/3 on the way of becoming one as I mentioned in Kecik’s blog, I got one too. You can catch me posing with it over at Kecik’s blog [Almost a bad case of cam-whoring!]. It turned out to be an apron.

They also had gifts given to anyone who had an enveloped stuck to the bottom of their chair, so at one point, everyone was in a frenzy turning their seat upside down, hoping that there would be an envelope under their chair. Sadly, we didn’t get any. O well, some you win, some you don’t…. Mum had an additional present because she bumpd into 2 of her old friends from school so she was very happy and it showed all over her face.

In addition to that, Sis made her a card and I slotted in a condensed version of something I blogged about some time back about her called ‘My Mummy, My Hero‘. It’s also over at Pelf’s blog too. I edited out some parts which I knew would bring back sad memories and I didn’t want to remind her of that. I knew she shed some tears over it because I could hear her blowing her nose after the rumpling of paper, early Sunday morning as we had placed our presents on the dining table the night before, as I lay in bed, waiting for her to finish reading. She loved both our simple presents and told me that what I wrote was very nice. To hear that really made me happy for although I know that whenever she’s proud of us, she hardly voices her happiness so that simple, ‘nice’ was more than enough for me. It must be that old habit of keeping a tough front.

All in all, we had a really nice day out and this must have been one of the best Mother’s Day celebration she’s had in years because this year, both my sis and I were home with her. Normally, it would only be me because sis is away at Uni in Johor.

To all the mothers, mohers-to-be and grandmothers too - HAPPY BELATED MOTHER’S DAY!! It’s never too late to say that and after all, everyday should be Mother’s Day. [Please apply my take on Valetine's Day here - EVERYDAY should be valentine's Day.]

I was suppose to put these pictures up yesterday but was so tied up that I didn’t have the time. Was out almost the whole day shopping with Mum and looking around for baby stuff. It’s bizarre how things can take quite a turn the moment you find out that you’re pregnant. Everything you buy or look at is baby this and baby that. There goes all the shopping for myself. Haiz…anyway, I’m just glad I found a nice and huge baby shop in Kulim to do my baby clothes shopping. Thank goodness the clothes are mostly affordable!! Babies grow up too fast…..much too fast to spend too much on clothes. So this is just perfect. Anyways, enjoy the pictures but don’t ask me the names of these flowers I took from Mum’s garden. I know how to thiak-thiak-thiak only!

This is one of my favourites and I think it’s called Bleeding Heart.

This is my favourite orchid and I have plans to immortalize it within next year. *hint hint* By the way, fyi the size of this orchid is the size of my palm. It is HUGE.

This was one of the first pictures I took when I first got my new cam - a beautiful lily.

Then my uncle gave it a go too and now I know where I stand. NO WHERE!

I think by now, you should know that Mum’s an orchid fanatic!! And she’s got some really gorgeous orchids too.

Note : Thousand apologies if you’ve tried to leave me a comment and kept getting that error message saying that you had to go back to fill up the math spam protection column. It’s totally my fault as I forgot to add in the code when I changed templates. My most deepest and sincerest [got ka this word?] apologies!  

Although I’m not Chinese and I do not practise Buddhism [if there is a connection between the two], I respect this festival all the same. All this thanks to living in a multi-cultural and multi-racial country. Qingming or Cheng Beng as I normally call it is a day to remember and honour one’s ancestors. I think it’s almost the same as the Catholic’s All Souls Day. This afternoon, Mum and I took a drive down to Ah Ma’s place because I had not visited her in a long time and thought that this would be the best time to drop in as the whole family would gather together to celebrate this festival. [I assumed that all the prayers had taken place before we arrived.] Ah Ma is my uncle’s mother in law and although I’m not directly related to her by blood - she treats me like her own. Ah Ma = Kuih Kapit!

Anyway, back to the story…..true enough, almost the whole gang was there! The kids have grown so much that I can hardly recognise them, and them me. We were greeted with warmth especially from Ah Ma since she seems to have this liking for Mum and she was also ’talking’ Kecik while rubbing my almost non-existent tummy. Heh. I thought it was really weird coz she’s the first one to EVER touch my tummy, except Ted of course. I wasn’t surprised to note the amount of food that was on the table for a group of people less than 15, half of which were kids. This is very typical of Ah Ma, Tua Ee and gang, they never stinge on food and are always on the look out to ‘tambah’ a second helping of rice for you.

Today was also the first time that I ate more than 2 pips [correct or not??] of durians - I ate FOUR! This is highly unusual as I’m not really a durian lover but I couldn’t help myself because it was SO good! It was just nice - not too fleshy and simply so sweet. Something rather odd since it is out of season at the moment. Ah Ma prepared her most famed sambal belancan/spicy shrimp paste and I managed to catch her in the act. *grin* She even posed for me too. Such a sweet old lady…..

Ah Ma [stil able to squat] pounding away…

Ah Ma taking a break to pose for me. *grin*

THE sambal in the making and if you look close enough, you can see the shrimp paste/belacan in the mix coz it’s brown in color.

Tua Ee famous for her nyonya cakes also brought a variety of kuihs to tempt my taste buds - if only I had 7 stomachs like a cow!!

Ma Khor and Uncle Chai busy hacking the roast pork, duck and chicken. Based on the mess they made, I now know why Ah Ma wanted to do this herself! Lol

The array of dishes Ah Ma & her daughters prepared : [clockwise] Crabs, pork & chicken soup, pork tripe soup, tau eu bak [pork cooked with dark soy sauce] and joo hu char [shredded sengkuang cooked with carrots and dried cuttlefish also thinly shredded and is normally eaten with fresh lettuce. You can add the sambal in as well to give it a 'kick'.]

As you can see, with these kind of food all around me, how not to put on 2kgs in one week??? Yes, people - after one week of being home, I’ve put on 2 kgs and trust me, it ain’t Kecik!! *pengsan*

Ps. One more week before Easter and the end of my Lent sacrifice before I can return to blogging daily!!! How slow time flies when you’re suffering in silence…..*shakes head sadly*

It’s Sunday and I’m finally able to blog for the week. Wow, it’s been tough and I’ve been away for half the week! This whole week I’ll be home and then next week, I’ll be in Malaysia - blogging on Sunday. I guess it’s just nice because I’m leaving this Saturday [10/3/2007] and I arrive the same night. Enough time to blog on Sunday, eh?

Our trip to Batemans Bay was great! I really enjoyed it and I bet so did Ted coz he loves to drive by green fields and we saw lots of them on the way back when the weather was better. It took us approximately 6 hours to get to our destination keeping in mind that we stopped off and on for a stretch and to have lunch. We had lunch at Gerringong and jokes aside, I was the ONLY Asian in that small town - really.

By the time we got to Batemans Bay, it was pouring so we stayed indoors and waited till it stopped then we went out to get some dinner and juice. We had pizza from a local pizzeria called Eagle Boys. The irony is that the employees are all old men. Boys indeed. The next day, we booked out river cruise and off we went to Birdland & Animal Park where I had loads of fun holding and feeding animals. Ted was occupied with his birds of course. And the following day, we went on our river cruise down the Clyde River and had lunch on board. We stopped at Nelligen for 1/2 hour. Nelligen has a population of 350 - it’s so quiet there I bet each time the church bell rings, people panic. The cruise was some 3 hours and then we went back to our hotel and went for a swim. All in all, it was a lazy holiday and well spent.

I recommend this place if you’re into snorkelling, scuba diving and particularly fishing. It’s also an oyster haven because it produces the best in NSW. Whale and dolphin watching is available at Jervis Bay which we didn’t go to. That could be next on our list. Now, on with the pix!

Stanwell Top scenic lookout, our first pit stop.

A little shop in Gerringong which I think could be Malaysian owned….:whistle: I didn’t find out though.

A view from our room - we’re right at the water front as you can see.

My slitery Diamond Python and me. He’s only 3 years old but can grow to up to 18 years old. Lot of growing to do, little one! Here’s a [very] short video as well. :biggrin:

Ted, me and Wilma the wombat. Such a happy family, eh? :wub:

Lots of animals to feed but only 2 bags to go around.

Ted feeding his feathered friends….

The cruise boat we were on, at sunset.

Few snapshots of while on the cruise

Artistic attempt at Nelligen - nearly got me blind!

Few more artistic attempts :

Moonlight by the water front

Lone sailor

Waterfront by night

My final shot in the morning before we left. This was at 8am and this one REALLY blinded me. Not easy taking a sun-shiny pix just after you’ve jumped out of bed. :pinch:

Hope you liked it. I know I enjoyed my well deserved trip very much. :biggrin: