My two older boys will be going for their camping today organised by their school.



I am actually looking forward to them not being in the house.



Some peace and quiet.



On the other hand I know I am going to miss them before the day is out.



Motherhood has mess me up big time.

Latest Attraction

Come, come everyone. This is the latest attraction in Taiping town. It is just behind our aunt's house. You want to strike it big in the 4D or Toto. Come here in the evening, 7pm there will be a crowd .
But we came in the morning as you can see from the pictures. No wonder our numbers did not appear !!!

Come here to stroke or pet wild boars. Yup, wild boars !
I am not pulling your legs.
At 7pm the priest from the Indian temple will ring a bell and the wild boars will appear from the forested area to the barricaded area you see in the picture. The priest will feed them. Now, the visitors that comes brings bread, biscuits....Really spoiling those wild boars.

Those wild boars had previously dug a hole below our aunt's fence in her back yard. They had uprooted her plants. Especially the yam and tapioca plants and had a feast with them.

Some one had stroke a wild boar here and he strike it big in 4D. It was in the papers and lots of tourist comes here. Hopeful punters or just curious they arrive by cars or bus loads . In the beginning they ended in front of our aunt's house because they thought the Indian temple was the one up the hill near her house. Instead this particular temple is just behind her house.

As we came in the morning there was no wild boars but there were plenty of monkeys running around. By the way this place stinks of you know what !!!!
And chickens. Rhys was going after the rooster as he had never seen one alive right in front of his eyes before.

So, those of you near this town make a trip here in the evening.

Remember to share some with me if you hit a jackpot.

Taiping

Some scenes taken while I was in Taiping.... Most of them were taken while we were driving past them.

Along the highway heading towards Taiping.
Surprised to see these two lovely buildings, beautifully painted. Back in Ipoh all those motifs are just painted over with one colour.

The first railway station in Malaysia. It looks like it had stuck in time.

Er.... can't remember what is this actually.

The rubbish house in Aulong. Took this picture as we drove past it on our way to purchase some of those heong pang.

Taiping town.

Latest attraction in town....... see next post.

^___^

Where Is This ???

Wah, my dear Sis you are good. You even manage to remember the name of the area it is located.

The pagoda at temple

Even though I can't remember the name of the area but I manage to get there.

The pagoda is where our grandparents tablet rest.

I have not paid a visit here for many years. Mainly because this particular pagoda only opens for visitors on certain days of the lunar month and on certain Chinese festivals. That day just happen to be the festival for the Goddess of Mercy. The boys, H and I popped over to pay our respect.

The whole place still looks the same only more tablets have filled up the previous empty places. We looked around and found other relatives of ours there too.

Btw Qing Ming - the Chinese Tomb Sweeping Festival is just around the corner. I guess this will be a post to remember my grandparents during this festival.

Repairs Going On....

Do you remember I mentioned those icicles looking things forming outside my boys' room and the dripping water in my room?
Well, some time back the authorities came saw, measure and time the dripping water. They came to the conclusion (don't asked me how) that it was due to the upstairs neighbour's bathrooms. The water proofing of their bathroom floor is faulty and causes a leak not to our bathroom ceiling but travels along the wall, above my room window to my boys room.

A closer look on how it looks outside the boys room. Yup, that funny looking thing sticking out is caused by the leakage.

We just received a notice from the Housing Development Board that renovation to the both bathroom floors upstairs will be done on the 1st and 6th of April.

Hopefully once their floor is repaired the leakage will stop in both of our rooms. As it is the leaking on our room's wall has stopped before any work was done upstairs. We had informed our neighbour upstairs about our problem. We all guessed it was due to his air conditioning. He checked and found the water pipe that connects to the air conditioning compressor has a leak plus the floor where the pipe runs is not tiled. He fixed them up and since then the wall in my room has stopped dripping water. We had asked him to turn on his air conditioning so that we can confirm that that is the cause but he had refused.

Even so that still does not explain the dripping water outside the boys room. Maybe that is why it had been decided that the main cause was from the bathrooms.

Now it looks like the authorities are making a guess too.

Anyway repairs and redecoration works to the blocks of flats in our area is now on going.
Started with men in gondolas spraying water outside our flats.
Today they had finished white washing our whole block which actually took them a couple of days to complete. It did not help that it rain rather heavily yesterday. Instead they move in doors and white washed the doors and walls outside our flat.

From what we had seen so far from the colours painted on to the other blocks - the colours SUCKS!!!!

No originality at all !!!!

Where Is This ???

Here is another pagoda for my Sis to guess ???

I will give you a couple of days to mull it over.

Eat, Eat... in Ipoh

Yup, I was back in Ipoh last week. It happen to be the school holidays - one week of holidays. I packed my family, took a bus ride up to Ipoh. It was a last minute decision as I was worried about Father.

He had not been well. His back pain is still there. From what Mother had told me through our numerous phone conversation he is not as well as he said he is. He had lost so much weight. He is now 150lbs. I am embarrassed to say I am heavier than him.

Although his appetite is slowly returning he still eats like a bird (according to Mother). While I was with them during that week he only went to eat out with us twice - Gourmet Square (picture above). He ordered a plate of chicken rice and only ate a quarter of it. Needless to say the rest of ate with gusto. From satays, claypot rice, curry noodles, lam mee, rojak, kangkong with cuttle fish and....

Snails ! They are actually a kind of sea shells. I just love sucking them :)

Next restaurant we went to were at a small lane - yee lai hong. Father himself suggested this place for lunch. Btw the restaurant was Wong Koh Kei.

Now at this restaurant .... first I must tell you we reached there around 1pm or so. The place was packed with customers waiting for seats outside the place. The tables along the corridor beside it was packed with customers too. Luckily we managed to get a seat in the corridor. FYI it happened to be a hot day in the middle of the afternoon. The waitress pity us and soon got us a table inside the restaurant. It was a table too small for the 7 of us. But she promised us that she will get us a bigger table once there is one available. Got our order for drinks and she disappeared after serving us the drinks. She did not really disappear. She was just too busy serving other customers. Took about 2o minutes for the 'captain' to take our order. So we sat around the small table sipping our hot Chinese tea eyeing the other tables being filled with yummy delicious, looking food. Boy, were we hungry.

We had to wait for a table big enough to fit us. Which only materialise when we have finished ogling that table's occupants stuffing themselves with their food. Which my #3 said " wish we can have that ! ". In a rather loud voice too.

We got our table and we did not have to wait long before the food we ordered appeared in front of us at. Wah.... we wallop them. Even Father finished his plate of rice. Sorry no pictures here as I was too hungry to bother about it. We only took some pictures after we left the restaurant.

Friday 12th, 2009 was a day of bad news.

The day started out just like any other day. Rushing and packing the boys off to school. In the afternoon I got a call from H informing me that his aunt had past away.

She was 79 years old. The poor lady was admitted to the hospital after a fall. Before that she had seen the doctor as she was not feeling well. She was admitted to the hospital and was soon transferred to ICU where she went into a coma. She never woke up again.

She is now lying at the funeral parlour surrounded by her family members and relatives.
H and I went over to pay our last respect with the boys last night. Everyone was having a good time telling jokes, reminiscing and catching up with the relatives that we had not seen for quite a while. But come Sunday there will be many tears during her funeral.

H and I will not be able to attend it as we had already made plans to visit my parents in Ipoh. My Father is not well too. Even though every time we enquire about his health, he will tell us he is fine and alright. But Mother will say the opposite. He still has the back pain and it is only controlled by medication. Although his appetite has improve but he still eats like a bird according to Mother.

Next, on that same day, Friday 12th I received a text message from my close friend C, that she is hospitalised. She was 14 weeks in to her 3rd pregnancy when she went for her routine ultrasound and found that the baby had died. She had to be admitted to remove the dead fetus. A vagina pessary was inserted and soon she had her contractions just as she would if she was delivering the baby itself. And because the placenta was not discharged together with the fetus she had to go for a DC in the OT.

A very traumatic and shocking experience for her and her hubby.. Although they did not plan this pregnancy, they had been looking forward to it. I feel sad for them but on the other hand I do not know how to console her.

I paid her a visit in the hospital and she told me the whole incident. Then we ended up chatting about everything else except that. Guess she need to talk about something else to forget about the sad part even though it is just for a while.

I feel so useless and helpless.

Yesterday I went to the immigration to collect my #3's passport. The previous passport carried his crying face and it won't do anymore since it was taken while he was 3 years old . Come to think of it that was the only picture I have of him crying. I remembered he was not cooperative at all during the whole photo session. In the end this was the best we can do after many shots and luckily it was accepted by the officers. I had scanned this picture from the old passport as I could not find another copy of that original crying face.

OK that is that. Now I want to tell you what I saw on the train ride to town. It kept me entertained as I feeling real sleepy before.

A pale face lady came up the train at the stop after mine. She sat right next to me and as soon as she sat down she whipped out a small bag. Fished out a compact and started painting her face. She did not only apply her lipstick. She started with the blusher, applied with a big brush not those mini ones that comes with the compact of blusher. Next came the whole palette of colours for her eyes. Out came more brushes and mini sponges for it. Now I know why her face was so pale. She must had her foundation and face powder on before she got on the train.

All the while the train rumble on from one station to the next. As the train spit out and suck in more passengers, she calmly went on with her makeup. As I was sitting next to her I did not turn to look at her. I more or less were able to see what she was doing out of the corner of my eyes. Everyone else was looking at one point or so. But not so my #3 who was sitting on the other side of me. He kept leaning over to take a look.

Nine stops later as I was alighting the train she was still with her eye makeup. This time it was the mascara and she had gingerly darken her lashes since two stops away. That was only for one eye. By the time I got up she was still with that same eye and her lips were still unpainted !
#3 whispered " Won't she poke her eye with that ?" in a rather loud whisper too. The other two boys had made frequent peeks at her over the game console they were playing.

I guess the rate she was going by the time she alights the train she would have her full make up on. A completely different looking person from the one that had boarded the train earlier.

Actually I had secretly had hope she make a blunder or like my son said 'poke' her eyes. That would had been more interesting. More drama on that otherwise boring train ride for all it's commuters. But no such luck. She was real pro when it came to applying the eye liner and mascara.

Once we had finished our business the boys wanted something to line their tummy. So we went over to J.CO for some doughnuts. A hot place where their wares are sold as soon as they are place on the counter. In the weekends queues were seen snaking out from it's outlets
Donuts.... what so special about them. Other than all those fancy sprinkles or deco on it. They are still the same old doughnuts or so I had thought. I use to prefer only the plain ones with a dusting of icing sugar over it.

But after I had sunk my fangs on one of these the very first time I was sold. I had to restrain myself from going back for more. My waist line is the only thing that is stopping me. :(

Ah...how I long for those days I can down anything without any worries.

Hello.....

Please go over to my other X stitch blog for some up dates.

In other words I am too lazy to repeat myself.

Secondly,......
I would like to wish my Sis a big

Happy Birthday!!!!

And as a birthday present I even made an effort to surf the www for a birthday cake just for her.

Recession you know. That is why there is only one cupcake and a candle. :)))

Sorry you must spent a bomb first before you can receive your real present.