The BOYS & our recent dining exploration....

Yes, i admit that I've been diverting my focus on post relating to food, cooking & baking a lot lately thus neglecting updates on the boys, did u miss my hansem ahh....??

One of the things that the boys missed a lot during their visits back to their dad's hometown was the possibility to experience motorbike riding!! Boys being boys, they just love the rides be it an offer from the grandpa or from his 'suk-suk'/uncle (BIL). As much as i enjoy seeing the excitement & happiness glowing from their smiles, but deep beneath my me, my heart was pumping fast each time they got into the rides, indicating a feeling of worry & fear as there were no helmets....yes, absolutely no safety!! How can i not worry?? But the thing is, at times, the grandpa just whipped them off his bike like that .........i mean......... even if I'm not so willing, what can i do.....sigh!! Thank god, there is "no-such-thing" as riding motorbike here in PJ/KL. In fact, I'd been planting an impression on them that riding motorbike is a forbidden thing to do here........hahaha. Call me paranoid...but yes, i don't think i will allow my kids to ride motorbike when they reach teenage hood !!!

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Scot & Sean riding pillion on 'ah kung' bike.....

On the other hand & having said the above, we encouraged the boys to learn cycling their bicycle on TWO wheels recently!! Isn't that conflicting?? I find it yes but I can't understand myself too....

The two balancing wheels of their bicycle has gotten spoilt recently & huby decided that we should just took them off & train them on two wheels. Initially, both of them 'chicken out' but these few days, i could see that Sean has picked up the guts to try cycling with 2 wheels thou he still couldn't balance well.

Sean trying.....

Below are some children's curtains material i grabbed when we went back to Alor Setar recently. Ever since the boys' room has been refurbished recently, the window was in need of new curtains to suit the change in its' size. And I have not been able to source some good print with good price here so knowing that AS has very cheap offer, i went hunting for them. This was the first time we left the boys with their grandparents at home and both huby & I went 'phak thor' doing some cheap buying .....It didn't disappoints me at all. There were so many colourful & interesting choices all of which cost only RM2.00+/- per meter..... oh dear, where to find here....? Now, my next mission is to kick my butt off to measure the window & crawl over to the tailor to get them done !!!

At the age of 5+, i considered the boys lucky to have travel to quite a number of states locally and also travelled to HK, Bangkok & K.K. So naturally, they adapt to hotel stays very well, in fact lately they started to show enjoyment with extreme eagerness & were full of anticipation each time they knew that they are about to have another hotel stay!! It was so obvious during our recent stay at the Northam Suite, Penang. Both of them were fighting to get their hands on the door key. And the moment the door was ajar, both of them were screaming & jumping about thrilling so much.....

Again we were lucky this time, our standard room was upgraded to suite room as they run out of king size bed for the standard category despite my specific request during reservation. So guess they have got no choice but to upgrade our room. So for the same price, we got an amazing offer. Lets take a look....

See how big was the living area....

The king size bed .......

Big bathroom with full jacuzzi service....

My monkeys enjoying themselves in the jacuzzi together with mumy.....soli, kenot appear in camera !!!

With such a good & cozy ambiance, it was a heavy decision for me to retire that night..... no, i won't just sleep like that ('ng seh tak farn ahh')! Despite the boys retiring quite late, i continued to enjoy the quiet moment after the 3 boys/man were in their dreamland. I made a nice hot nescafe to sip in front of the TV and god knows how heaven those moments were for me esp. when the hotel offered ASTRO Wah Lai Toi channel. In fact the pleasures resulted in me fallen asleep in the living sofa until 3a.m. before i dragged myself to the bed......

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~~~ Our recent dining exploration ~~~

On the only night in Penang, my eldest SIL treated us to a seafood dinner by the beach side. A totally new place for both huby & I. Probably the place is popular only to local Penangites. It took about 35-40 minutes drive from penang city. The place is called Gertak Sanggul, (a fishing village situated in a lagoon between the South-Western tip and the South-Eastern tip of Penang island), the Chinese name of this village is literally "Beautiful Lake". It was indeed a good place for local tourist like us.......you get to walk by the beach & enjoy the beautiful sunset before proceeding to dine a superb seafood!

Check out the restaurant behind.....it was 'people mountain people sea' on a sunday.

The twins were enjoying the swing under the tree.....

Sean with Jewel cheh-cheh....

Scot d 'tai-kor'........

Ooh ya....nearly forgottent to give a review of the food. It was marvellous. Delicious food, very generous portion & reasonable price too! But remember, SIL said you need to make reservation & get the dishes pre-order, else it will easily take you more than an hour wait!

More photos here

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Last weekend during my dad's b'day dinner, Angus (my 4th sister's huby) suggested to bring us to a dinner at Bukit Tinggi, where he claimed the rest. serve very unique dishes!! Before Angus became our family member, my huby used to be the "sik kar" (food expert) of the family but that title has since been taken over by Angus..... this 'fei chai' is really damn good with food. So being natural food appreciator, all of us agree with the plan except my eldest sis family. Mic was on duty so she can't joined too. So together with my parents & youngest sis, all in 7 adults plus my 2 mickeys squeezed into our 7-seater MPV and off we departed at 5pm on Sunday!

We now call it the "umbrella restaurant" as you can see below, guess it was the signature display of the restaurant. Actually, i've came across this restaurant being mentioned by wen before. Apparently, huby checked that the restaurant was operated by Chinese people from "Kong Sai-China"........, so the food was also of 'Kong Sai' style....

The 2 'fei lou' were checking on the menu.....

While the men do the 'job', we went to explore the garden beside the rest. There were vegetables & fruits being home-grown...wonder if they were organic!! Sean with Teng yi-yi & Maggie yi-yi...

Sorry....for drooling you with food again......

Sweet & juicy pork.....verdict: was good !!

One of the signature dish. On the top layer were mixture of clams, prawns & crabs, all steam with wain stock. Very fresh. Bottom layer consist of the wain soup which was later used to cook some vegetables. We all got so full finishing till the very last drop of the soup...... verdict: very unique way of cooking!

Stew lamb. Actually all of us ladies aren't lamb eater but we did gave a bite to try this, it doesn't really has that strong milky/'sou' taste that we rejected so it was ok for us...

The fish was a tad disappointed though. The name was 'si-beh' 'canggih' i tell you: "shuet san fei wu"......hahaha !! But as it was merely steam probably to preserve the freshness of it, the fish was tasteless to most of us. Guess we were too accustom to having strong gravy on our dishes!

Arghhh.....after the meal, we got to drive all the way back to the city which took us 45 mins, was it really worth the travel?? Well, i would say it really depends on individual preference. Angus thought the foods there were uniquely cooked, none of which could be eaten here in the city so obviously it was worth the drive for him. Btw, he was a frequent visitor there.... :( But for the rest, esp. mom has beg to differ, probably they didn't really know how to appreciate the uniqueness in this regards! And i guess the negative decision was partly affected by the high price too. The dinner cost us about RM350 poorer....

One more thing worth mentioning was that apparently the chef from China can't read so the dishes on the order slip needs to be "DRAWN" in symbols they understand....check out below, so funny hor..........!!!

Anyhow, it was a great family get-together as we cheered ourselves in the car all the way up the hill !! Let me share with you a hillarious conversation with the boys that got everyone choke-on laughing:

Sean was grumpy all the way up as he was hungry! So even after mumy explained, he continued to be noisy & kept pressing dady to drive faster! So as usual mumy has no patience. Mumy told sean that dady can drop him off the road side & he can run as fast as he could if he still claims that dady was slow. Mumy even asked Sean if he wants to catch a taxi himself?? Of course that agitated Sean a lot. Sean started rejecting mumy & said he wants only kakak instead. Then mumy reminded Sean that he claimed that kakak is smelly, then in retaliation, Sean has no more choice .......... guess what his next statement was?

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Sean said : Then i ask dady to find another mumy !!!

I really can't imagine he has this in his mind.......... u say i heart attack or not??

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... Sean ooh my sean ...

Hope u had a pleasure reading & viewing the photos.......

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